Mtii:^--  ■jtMiiit^.iSiiSiaauaMii'i.iuiimSii 


\   ERNEST 
j     RENAN 

I     WILLIAM-BARRS' 


li.   II.   m.AUKWHI.L. 


LITERARY 
LIVES 


SDITED    BY 

W. ROBERTSON 
NICOLL 

ERNEST 
RENAN 


AN  immense  river  of  oblivion  sweeps  us  onward  into  a 
gulf  without  a  name.  O  abyss,  thou  art  the  only 
God  !  The  tears  of  all  peoples  are  tears  indeed  ;  the  dreams 
of  all  wise  men  have  in  them  a  parcel  of  the  truth.  All  here 
below  is  but  symbol  and  dream.  The  gods  pass  away  like 
men  ;  it  would  not  be  well  did  they  last  for  ever.  The  faith 
which  we  have  held  ought  never  to  be  a  chain.  We  have 
done  our  duty  by  it  when  we  have  carefully  wrapped  it 
round  in  the  purple  shroud  wherein  the  dead  gods  sleep. 


My  life  has  been  such  as  I  desired,  such  as  I  conceived  to 
be  the  best.  Had  T  to  live  it  over  again,  I  should  make  very 
little  change.  On  the  other  hand,  I  am  not  much  afraid  of 
the  future.     I  shall  have  my  biography  and  my  legend. 

Ernest  Renan. 


I 


ERNKSr   RRNAN. 


ERNEST 

RENAN 


BY   WILLIAM    BARRY, 
D.D. 


LITERARY  LIVES 


LONDON:      HODDER    AND 
STOUGHTON  MCMV 


Br     THE     SAME     AUTHOR 

CARDINAL    NEWMAN 
HERALDS   OF    REVOLT 
THE    PAPAL    MONARCHY 
THE    DAYSPRING 
THE    WIZARD'S    KNOT 
ARDEN    MASSITER 
THE    TWO    STANDARDS 
THE    PLACE    OF    DREAMS 
THE    NEW    ANTIGONE 


Contents 


CHAPTER  I 

PACE 

The  Breton  Peasant    ......         i 


CHAPTER  II 
Eclipse  of  Faith  ......       28 

CHAPTER  III 
The  Scholar  in  Paris  .....       65 

CHAPTER  [V 

Galilee  and  Afterwards      .....       98 

•v  h 


vi  Cofitents 

CHAPTER  V 

PAGE 

In  St.  Paul's  Footsteps        .         .         .         .         .129 

CHAPTER  VI 
Paris  and  Jerusalem     ......     161 

CHAPTER  VII 

ECCLESIASTES,    OR  THE  PrEACHER  ....       204 

CHAPTER  VIII 
Last  Days,  Death,  and  Epitaph  .         .         .     241 


Some   Leading   Dates 

Ernest  Renan — 

Born  at  Treguier  .          .          .          .          .          .1823 

Student  in  Paris 1838-1845 

Leaves  St.  Sulpice  ......     1845 

Mission  to  Italy 1849 

Succeeds  Augustin  Thierry   .....      1856 

Mission  to  Syria  ......     i860 

Chair  of  Hebrew  ......     1861 

Publishes  Life  oj  Jesiis 1863 

vii 


vm       Some  Leadhig  Dates 


Travels  in  Asia  Minor  and  Greece         .          .          .  1865 

St.  Paul  published 1869 

Resumes  Chair  of  Hebrew    .....  1870 

Antichrist  published      ......  1873 

Elected  to  French  Academy          ....  1879 

Reminiscences  of  Toiith  .         .         .         .1883 

Philosophic  Dramas        ......  1886 

History  of  Israel           ......  1888 

Dies 1892 

Monument  at  Treguier 1903 


List  of  Illustrations 

Ernest  Renan,  i860,  from  a  Painting  by  Henry 

Scheffer  .....  Front  is. 

FACING    PAGE 

Treguier    .          .          ...          .          .  .        24 

Ernest  Renan's  Birthplace  at  Treguier              .  ,       60 

Portion  of  a  Letter  written  by  Renan  in  1838  .        92 

Madame  Ernest  Renan      .          .          .          .  .120 

Ernest  Renan  in  his  Study          .           .           .  .152 

Rosmapamon  ......      192 

Ernest  Renan,  1892,  from  a  Painting  by  Bonnat  .      232 

The  Statue  of  Ernest  Renan  at  Treguier        .  .      270 


The  Publishers  zvish  to  acknowledge  their  indebted- 
ness to  Madame  Psichari  and  M.  Armand-Dayot  for 
kind  permission  to  include  some  of  the  illustrations. 


chapter   I 

THE  BRETON  PEASANT 

BRITTANY,  the  green  and  grey  land 
where,  according  to  legend,  Merlin 
the  enchanter  lies  in  a  magic  sleep 
under  the  white  thorn  near  Paimpol — this 
rock-bound,  sea-beaten-coast,  famous  for  its 
storms  and  its  disasters — has  given  birth  to 
men  who,  while  in  language  they  were  French 
or  Latin,  kept  the  Celtic  heart,  and  charmed 
the  world  with  Celtic  eloquence.  In  the  early 
Middle  Ages,  Abelard,  born  at  Palais  near 
Nantes  in  1079,  lived  out  his  romance  amid 
the  battle-cries  that  ushered  in,  on  the  site  of 
the  Latin  Quarter  at  Paris,  a  great  secular 
period,  the  term  of  which  none  may  foresee. 
Abelard  is  the  first  of  modern  thinkers,  pointing 
the  way  through  scholastic  mazes  to  Renais- 
sance and  Revolution.  He  is  Yea  and  Nay, 
"  Sic  et  non,"  alive  to  both  sides  of  an  argu- 

I 


2  Renan 

ment,  subtle,  proud,  self-determined,  unhappy, 
and  he  stores  up  an  inheritance  which  others 
turn  to  better  account.  He  is  the  most 
illustrious  of  Bretons,  yet  a  rebel  against  Church 
authority,  a  strange  complex  creature,  a  lover 
and  a  penitent,  condemned  yet  devout.  He 
has  left  a  name  over  which  disputes  never 
have  ceased,  nor  will  cease.  We  admire,  dis- 
trust, and  pity  Abelard.  But  singular  as  he 
remains  in  his  greatness,  he  has  had  no  successor 
more  closely  akin  to  him  than  Ernest  Renan. 

Passing  over  seven  hundred  years  we  come  to 
the  melancholy  and  splendid  Chateaubriand, 
who  first  saw  the  light  at  St.  Malo,  created  in 
his  Rene  the  latest  type  of  Hamlet,  which 
Byron  reproduced  in  Childe  Harold,  and 
dazzled  the  opening  nineteenth  century  with 
a  Genius  of  Christianity,  framed  in  rhetoric 
of  a  high  order  but  in  somewhat  fading  colours. 
To  him  we  may  oppose  the  figure  of  Lamen- 
nais,  priest,  republican,  apostate,  revolutionary, 
whose  tragic  fortunes,  gleams  of  inspiration, 
and  unmanageable  temper,  set  him  apart  from 
friends  and  foes,  and  whose  ideas  have  won 
their  triumphs  while  he  rests  at  P^re  la  Chaise 


The   Breton   Peasant 


in  an  unknown  grave.  Had  Lamennais  not 
fallen  away  from  Rome,  he  would  have  shared 
with  Newman  the  foremost  honours  among 
Churchmen  of  his  day.  But,  like  Abelard,  he 
went  down  in  a  crusade  on  behalf  of  the  fresh 
thought  which  was  effacing  ancient  landmarks, 
confusing  minds,  and  troubling  Israel. 

Those  who  are  acquainted  with  no  more 
than  the  outlines  of  Kenan's  life,  will  yet  be 
feeling,  in  what  has  just  been  said,  how  much 
he  owes  to  Brittany  ;  how  he  recalls  Abelard 
by  his  perpetual  balancing  of  Yea  and  Nay  ; 
how  he  manipulates  a  style  as  creative  as 
Chateaubriand's,  though  less  brilliant  and,  in 
its  shades,  more  exquisite  ;  how  he  is,  like 
Lamennais,  "  un  pretre  manque  "  ;  and  how 
striking  is  the  parallel  which  may  be  drawn  by 
way  of  contrast  between  himself  and  Newman. 

In  all  these  dramas,  reaching  over  hundreds 
of  years,  the  protagonist,  ever  in  the  arena,  is 
the  Catholic  Church.  Loved  or  hated,  that 
Church,  as  if  it  were  the  Fate  in  old  Greek 
stories,  furnishes  the  matter,  interposes  at  a 
given  moment,  and  unbinds  the  issue  which  at 
last  it  decides.     What  interest  can  equal  this, 


4  Renan 

whether  we  seek  pathos  or  sublime  effects,  or 
the  complication  of  moods  and  action,  or  the 
human  touch,  transfiguring  to  lucid  and  beau- 
tiful imagery  motives,  conceptions,  resolves, 
otherwise  hidden  from  our  eyes  ?  From  Abe- 
lard,  dying  in  1142,  down  to  Renan,  whose 
funeral  date  is  1892,  we  reckon  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  years,  during  which  the  world's  de- 
bate has  gone  on  without  intermission  ;  and 
philosophy,  science,  dogma,  have  ever  met 
in  conflict,  while  ever  aiming  at  friendship. 
Who  can  pretend  to  be  impartial,  that  is  to 
say,  coldly  indifferent,  when  he  looks  on  these 
things  ?  Certainly  not  the  present  writer. 
Nevertheless,  in  describing  that  career  which 
Renan  did  not  hesitate  to  qualify  as  his  "  charm- 
ing promenade  through  tlie  nineteenth  cen- 
tury," I  hope  not  to  indulge  in  caricature,  and 
I  shall  spare  invective.  The  tale  may  often 
be  told  in  its  hero's  own  wcrds,  choice  and 
discreetly  sarcastic  ;  sometimes,  but  rarely, 
touching  ;  and  if  we  do  not  deny  ourselves  the 
grain  of  salt  which  is  to  season  his  Dichtung 
und  Wahrheity  we  have  his  leave  in  the  preface 
to  the  Reminiscences^  where  he  warns  us  frankly 


The  Breton   Peasant 


that  no  man  is  ever  quite  candid  about  him- 
self. 

Ernest  Renan  was  born  at  Treguier,  on  Feb- 
ruary 27,  1823.  Treguier  is  an  old  decaying 
town,  looking  out  toward  the  broad  English 
Channel  from  its  high  hil],  crowned  with  a 
soaring  Gothic  cathedral  of  the  fourteenth 
century  ;  a  town  of  long  silent  streets  bordered 
with  convent  walls  over  which,  in  summer,  the 
foliage  hangs  abundantly.  Many  churches 
and  chapels,  each  with  its  legend,  give  the 
place,  which  was  long  a  bishop's  See,  the  air, 
says  Renan,  of  Benares  and  Jagatnata.  Reli- 
gion has  ever  been  to  the  Bretons  home  and 
country  ;  as  heathen  they  believed  in  Fairy- 
land ;  when  they  were  made  Christian,  they 
worshipped  their  innumerable  saints.  Tre- 
guier had  its  chapel  of  Saint  Yves,  the  father 
of  orphans,  to  whom  Renan's  widowed  mother 
dedicated  her  child  ;  it  had  a  holy  well  near 
Notre  Dame  du  Tromeur  ;  and  a  Madonna  in 
painted  wood  to  which  the  people  came  on 
pilgrimage.  These  memories  and  customs 
lasted  on,  all  through  the  Terror,  the  wars  of 
Napoleon,    the    Bourbon    Restoration.     Such 


6  Renan 

dates  were  accidents  in  the  life  of  Treguier, 
which  went  on  dreaming  of  the  fifth  century, 
when  its  first  inhabitants  passed  over  sea  from 
Wales.  Its  patron  was  St.  Tudwal,  whom  it 
inserted  in  the  list  of  Popes  ;  was  not  his  real 
name  Pabu  Tual  ?  The  Cathedral  marked  an- 
other stage.  This  Breton  bishopric  was  made 
subject  to  Tours,  not  willingly,  for  it  cherished 
its  immemorial  freedom.  Then,  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  bishop's  house  and  the 
convents  were  founded.  At  the  Revolution 
the  last  bishop  fled  to  England.  Napoleon 
suppressed  the  See.  But  when  the  Bourbons 
came  back,  an  ecclesiastical  school  was  set  up 
in  the  old  seminary  ;  the  convents  flourished 
again  ;  and  in  this  atmosphere,  pious  and 
medieval,  but  more  profoundly  Celtic,  Renan 
drew  his  first  breath. 

Looking  back  over  the  past  at  Athens  in 
1865,  when  the  Lije  of  Jesus  had  brought  him 
a  reputation  beyond  all  he  could  ever  have 
anticipated,  he  delights  to  dwell  on  his  descent 
from  sailors  and  adventurers  in  the  misty  seas 
of  the  West.  The  good  old  clan  which  came 
from  Cardigan  to  Goelo,  and  still  abounds  there, 


The   Bret07i   Peasant 


was  called  after  St.  Renan  or  Ronan,  a  very- 
singular  hermit,  equally  obstinate  alive  or  dead. 
But  he  was  also  proud  of  his  mother's  Gascon  wit 
and  humour,  as  accounting  for  his  own.  This 
admirable  woman  was  a  small  bright  figure, 
speaking  Breton  excellently  well,  and  her  chil- 
dren— an  elder  son,  Alain,  her  daughter  Hen- 
riette,  and  Ernest — learned  it  in  their  young 
days.  All  Madame  Renan's  influence  made 
for  piety  and  a  loyal  attachment  to  the  House 
of  France  ;  by  no  means  to  Louis  Philippe, 
whom  she  and  her  friends  despised  as  a  traitor 
that  had  filched  the  crown  and  put  it  in  his 
pocket.  Her  kindred  were  of  the  middle  class, 
moderately  well  to  do,  and  Ernest  paid  them 
visits  in  Lannion,  which  struck  him  as  a  very 
worldly  and  frivolous  place,  compared  with 
meditative  Treguier.  But  on  the  father's  side 
traditions  and  principles  were  altogether  dif- 
ferent, and  in  fact  revolutionary. 

Ernest  was  only  five  when  that  father's  dead 
body  was  found  on  the  sands  of  Erquy,  in 
August  1828,  under  circumstances  that  pointed 
to  suicide.  A  month  earlier  the  boat  of  which 
he  was  master  had  come  into  port  at  Treguier 


8  Renan 

without  him.  Dreamy  and  never  sanguine,  he 
could  make  nothing  of  business,  any  more  than 
the  other  Renans,  all  of  whom,  said  their  most 
famous  descendant  gaily,  were  as  poor  as  Job, 
except  one,  who  accumulated  a  fortune  and  got 
a  bad  name  by  trading  in  negroes.  But  Cap- 
tain Renan  had  seen  service  under  Villaret 
Joyeuse  ;  he  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
English  and  been  compelled  to  work  several 
years  "  sur  les  pontons,"  an  indefinite  phrase, 
which  may  signify  hard  labour  at  Portsmouth 
or  some  naval  station.  Ernest's  grandfather, 
too,  was  an  ardent  patriot ;  his  uncles  on  that 
side  were  even  Jacobins.  But  the  patriot 
grandfather  would  not  buy  any  of  the  so-called 
"  national  estates,"  the  proceeds  of  a  ruthless 
confiscation,  which  were  put  up  for  sale  in  the 
open  market. 

Such  conduct  implies  a  rare  degree  of  gener- 
osity. Whether  Catholics  or  Republicans,  his 
kindred  were  teaching  the  lad  to  sacrifice 
worldly  advantages  for  the  sake  of  a  cause,  be 
it  the  "  Kingdom  of  God  "  or  the  "  principles 
of  humanity."  That  he  learned  the  lesson  is 
undoubted  ;    we  cannot,  however,  follow  his 


T^he   Breton   Peasa?it 


course  through  life  without  observing  in  him 
a  sense  of  the  practical  and  a  sagacity  in  making 
the  most  of  his  opportunities,  which  he  can 
hardly  have  derived  from  his  Breton  ancestors. 
His  training  was  to  be  wholly  clerical.  In 
the  long  silent  streets  this  ugly  little  lad,  square 
built,  with  a  head  too  large  for  his  frail  body, 
and  with  grave  dreamy  eyes  which  took  in  more 
than  they  expressed,  went  to  and  fro,  between 
the  quaint  old  house  where  he  was  born  and 
the  college  where  he  learnt  his  lessons.  As  a 
child  he  was  very  delicate.  His  life  had  hung 
on  a  thread,  and  he  tells  how  the  witch-wife 
Gode — that  is  to  say,  Kate — had  taken  one  of 
his  little  shirts  when  he  was  two  months  old, 
gone  down  to  the  "sacred  spring,"  and  con- 
jured with  it  by  flinging  it  out  on  the  waters. 
If  it  sank,  he  would  soon  die  ;  if  it  floated,  he 
was  saved.  She  came  back  triumphant.  "  He 
means  to  live  !  He  means  to  live !  "  she 
cried  in  ecstasy.  The  white  garment  had 
spread  its  arms  and  flown  over  the  wavelets. 
"  From  that  hour,"  says  Renan,  smiling,  "  I 
was  a  favourite  with  the  fairies,  and  I  loved 
them  in  turn."     We  Celts,  he  goes  on  to  ob- 


lo  R 


enan 


serve,  shall  never  build  the  Parthenon,  we 
have  no  marble  ;  but  we  know  how  to  lay  hold 
of  the  heart  and  the  soul  ;  we  dip  our  hands 
into  the  very  inmost  of  man, "and  we  draw  them 
forth,  as  did  the  witches  in  Macbeth^  full 
of  the  secrets  of  infinitude.  The  old  religion, 
which  in  the  twelfth  century  came  under 
Norman  and  Medieval-Roman  usages,  as  in 
the  seventeenth  it  was  guided  by  the  Jesuits, 
had  never  lost  its  more  primitive  colour  among 
the  Bretons. 

These  things  gave  to  the  incomparable  child 
of  genius  a  rich  dim  background  whereon  to 
embroider  his  early  ambitions  and  fantasies,  and 
afterwards  the  whole  world,  Parisian,  Greek, 
Oriental,  which  he  conquered  in  thought  and 
travelling.  Very  poor,  cut  off  apparently  from 
the  best  of  education,  he  gained  in  secluded  Tre- 
guier  the  one  thing  which  our  schools  cannot 
yield — a  perfect  detachment  from  "das  Gemeine 
was  uns  alle  bandigt."  That  is  ever  the  condi- 
tion of  poetry  and  the  ideal.  In  a  crowd  what 
room  is  there  for  distinction  ?  But  Ernest 
Renan  kept  aloof  at  all  times  from  the  crowd, 
even  when  as  a  too  indulgent  sceptic  in  his  last 


The  Breton   Peasant  1 1 

days  he  flattered  many  a  national  weakness. 
The  Church  brought  him  up.  Her  serious 
and  disinterested  clergy — M.  Pasco,  M.  Du- 
chene,  M.  Aufltret,  and  others  whom  he  names 
affectionately — taught  him  all  they  knew.  They 
were  scarcely  advanced  beyond  the  year  1630 
in  their  methods  ;  to  their  feeling  no 
religious  verse  had  been  written  since  the 
younger  Racine  laid  down  his  pen.  They 
could  not  bear  Lamartine's  hymns  and 
elegies,  though  he  too  had  been  moulded  by 
clerics.  Victor  Hugo  was  to  them  unknown, 
as  much  as  the  French  of  Paris  to  Chaucer's 
Prioress  in  Stratford-atte-Bowe.  History  they 
learned  in  Rollin.  On  verse-making  they 
looked  as  a  dangerous  excitement,  not  to  be 
encouraged.  Hence  Kenan,  like  some  other 
great  masters  of  prose — Balzac,  George  Sand, 
Pierre  Loti — could  not  manage  the  French 
Alexandrine  couplet,  whereby  the  world  has 
had  no  loss  that  we  need  lament.  Natural 
science  was  neglected  ;  yet  we  should  bear  in 
mind  that  other  ecclesiastics  outside  Treguier 
had  taken  an  honourable  share  in  the  develop- 
ment of  physics  and  biology.     But  these  good 


1 2  Renan 

Bretons  taught  mathematics  well,  and  Renan 
felt  a  passionate  drawing  to  that  discipline,  as 
Newman  also  did.  His  comrade,  Guyomar,  kept 
pace  with  him  in  all  his  lessons ;  and  the 
two  boys  chalked  up  problems  as  they  went 
home,  on  the  great  closed  gates  of  the  old 
mansions  which  they  passed  by. 

Renan's  father  had  left  nothing  but  debts. 
His  brave  mother  found  it  hard  to  get  food  and 
fuel  in  the  winter.  His  clothes  were  often 
patched,  his  shoes  clouted.  For  the  kindest 
things  in  life  he  was  indebted  to  his  sister  Hen- 
riette,  twelve  years  older  than  himself — the 
real  good  fairy  whose  plain  features  hid  an  ex- 
quisite soul,  and  whose  devotion  to  him  knew 
no  bounds.  Yet  he  does  not  ascribe  even  to 
his  beloved  nurse  and  playmate  the  best  that 
was  in  him.  It  is  of  the  clergy  at  Treguier  that 
he  writes  :  "  They  were  my  first  spiritual 
teachers,  and  I  owe  to  them  whatever  of  good 
there  may  be  in  me.  ...  I  have  had  since 
masters  more  brilliant  and  sagacious ;  I  have 
never  had  any  more  venerable ;  and  that 
accounts  for  my  frequent  differences  with  some 
of  my  friends.      I  have  had  the  happiness  of 


The  Breton  Peasant         1 3 

knowing  absolute  virtue  ;  I  understand  what 
faith  is  ...  I  feel  that  my  life  is  always  con- 
trolled by  a  faith  which  I  possess  no  longer." 

He  calls  that  old  time  at  college  a  "  precious 
experience,"  though  he  read  into  it  afterwards 
"  saintly  illusions  "  and  held  it  to  be  a  divine 
deception;  He  became,  as  it  were,  the  Or- 
pheus of  a  lost  Eurydice,  the  white  sea- 
mew  flying  round  about  the  ruined  church 
of  Saint  Michael,  which  had  been  struck  by 
lightning,  and  which  the  bird  strives  to  enter, 
while  the  peasant  that  goes  by  murmurs 
on  seeing  it,  "  That  is  the  soul  of  a  priest 
who  wants  to  say  Mass."  In  vain  for  him  to 
begin,  "  I  will  go  unto  the  altar  of  God  "  ; 
there  is  no  server  who  may  reply,  "Unto  God 
that  giveth  joy  to  my  youth."  Pretty  enough, 
and  true,  and  sad  !  Yet  still  more  astonishing 
that  Renan,  in  his  thrice-fortunate  old  age,  felt 
these  regrets  thus  keenly. 

Soldier  or  sailor,  as  his  father  was,  he  could 
not  be.  His  shy  reserve,  his  want  of  physical 
vigour,  his  growing  thoughtfulness,  and,  above 
all,  his  absorption  in  books,  predestined  him  for 
the  sanctuary.     He  spent  delightful  hours  in 


1 4  Renan 

the  Cathedral ;  he  loved  to  fancy  himself  a 
priest.  Nevertheless,  Renan  was  neither  then 
nor  afterwards  exactly  devout.  A  pattern 
scholar,  he  took  prizes  and  kept  the  top  of  his 
form.  But  he  came  late  to  Mass ;  he  offered 
none  of  those  tokens  by  which  the  youthful 
saint  is  recognizable.  His  vocation — a  solemn 
word  among  Catholics,  who  liken  every  true 
priest  to  the  young  Samuel — grew  out  of  his 
love  for  learning.  He  did  not  look  forward  to 
missionary  or  parochial  duties  ;  and  when  he 
lightly  sketches  what  his  career  might  have 
been  in  the  diocese  of  St.  Brieuc,  it  is  as  a 
professor,  a  vicar-general,  and  a  canon  lawyer 
that  he  sees  himself  enjoying  an  excellent 
reputation. 

From  the  first  he  wanted  to  know  all  things. 
But  he  was  very  innocent.  The  other  boys 
called  him  "  Mademoiselle,"  and  played  tricks 
on  him.  The  girls,  he  says,  found  him  "  quiet 
and  reasonable."  He  tells  the  story  of  one, 
Noemi,  for  whom  he  had  a  liking,  which  naturally 
faded  away  as  he  turned  towards  his  predes- 
tined noviciate.  He  was  learning  the  classics — 
a  bad  sign  his  uncle  Renan,  the  watchmaker, 


The  Breton  Peasant         15 

thought  it,  and  warned  him  not  to  become 
what  La  Fontaine  called  in  the  fable  an 
"  ass,  burdened  with  Latin."  For  this  proto- 
type of  M.  Homais,  the  bourgeois  Voltairian 
whom  we  have  all  laughed  over  in  Madame 
Bovary,  desired  Ernest  to  succeed  him  at 
the  shop.  That,  indeed,  might  have  come  to 
pass,  had  not  the  good  fairy,  Henriette,  written 
from  Paris  in  a  decisive  moment,  which  brought 
in  its  wake  the  most  astonishing  change  of 
fortune. 

Henriette,  too,  was  highly  endowed.  She 
had  learned  Latin  from  an  old  Ursuline  nun  ; 
but  her  special  gift  was  teaching,  and  her 
French  in  time  acquired  a  purity,  strength, 
and  clearness  which  would  have  charmed 
the  grand  siecle.  Her  character  was  cast  on 
antique  lines.  Resolved  to  pay  her  father's 
debts,  she  had  gone  up  to  Paris  in  1835,  and 
endured  the  solitary  griefs  and  harsh  treatment 
of  a  governess  in  fashionable  schools.  But  she 
made  friends,  studied  sixteen  hours  a  day,  and 
would  not  despair.  At  home  she  had  refused 
an  offer  of  marriage,  honourable  in  itself,  but 
which   would    have   separated   her    from   her 


1 6  Renan 

family.  Alain,  it  appears,  was  settled  in  Paris. 
Henriette  spoke  of  her  brother  Ernest,  who 
had  taken  all  the  first  prizes  in  his  school  at 
Treguier,  to  a  zealous  Catholic  physician,  M. 
Descuret ;  and  he,  in  turn,  brought  the  list  of 
distinctions  (a  striking  document  which  is  still 
in  existence)  under  the  notice  of  M.  Dupan- 
loup. 

That  celebrated  man  had  achieved  fame  by 
securing  the  reconciliation  to  the  Church — or, 
as  it  was  termed,  the  repentance — on  his  death- 
bed, of  M.  le  Prince  de  Talleyrand,  formerly 
Bishop  of  Autun.  As  a  reward,  M.  Dupanloup 
was  set  over  the  junior  seminary,  called  St. 
Nicolas  du  Chardonnet,  in  the  Rue  St.  Victor 
at  Paris,  which  he  speedily  raised  to  the  first 
rank  in  point  of  numbers  and  renown.  His  cry 
was  "  Give  me  scholars  "  ;  rich  or  poor,  it  did 
not  matter  ;  he  asked  only  for  talent  which 
he  might  educate.  This  Breton  peasant's 
unusual  record  won  his  favour  immediately. 
Dupanloup  offered  him  on  behalf  of  M.  de 
Quelen,  the  archbishop,  a  clerical  scholarship, 
tenable  until  Ernest  should  be  twenty-five,  on 
condition  that  it  was  accepted  without  delay. 


The  Breton  Peasant         17 

Henriette's  letter,  dated  August  31,  1838,  told 
the  good  news  in  fervent  accents.  Her  bro- 
ther must  pack  up  at  once,  catch  the  diligence 
at  Guingamp,  borrow  the  necessary  funds  in 
her  name  from  his  uncle  Forestier,  and  be  in 
Paris  on  Wednesday  evening  or  Thursday 
morning.  "  Tell  mother  that  her  boy's  future 
is  decided,"  Henriette  wrote  exultingly. 

Far  more,  indeed,  was  at  stake  than  she  or 
anyone  could  imagine.  This  awkward,  shy  lad, 
a  rustic  in  manners,  poor  and  proud,  was  destined 
to  become  'the  supreme  French  writer  of  his 
century.  He  would  not  be  a  priest,  but  an  artist 
of  the  Renaissance,  exercising  in  all  directions  an 
influence  which  no  other  man  has  wielded. 
The  Church  was  giving  every  advantage  to  a 
son  who  would  turn  out  her  resolute  enemy, 
marked  for  ever  in  the  legend  of  his  day  as 
having  attempted  to  rewrite  the  Gospel  in 
secular  and  dilettante  colours.  It  was  the 
strangest  of  dramatic  sequences  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  which  M.  Dupanloup  had, 
after  this  surprising  fashion,   inaugurated. 

The  lad,  now  in  his  sixteenth  year,  was  stay- 
ing at  a  place  near  Treguier,  when  a  messenger 

2 


1 8  Renan 

brought  the  happy  news.  Renan  never  forgot 
his  walk  home  across  country,  under  the  setting 
sun,  while  village  sent  on  to  village  the  chimes 
of  the  Angelus,  a  symbol  of  that  tranquil  faith 
and  life  from  which  he  was  turning  to  plunge 
into  our  modern  world.  On  September  7, 
1838,  he  arrived  in  Paris  ;  next  day  the  kindly 
physician  who  had  procured  his  scholarship 
took  him  to  St.  Nicolas,  and  on  the  day  after 
begins  his  "  correspondence  while  at  the  semi- 
nary," by  means  of  which  we  may  fill  up  and 
now  and  then  rectify  the  memories  long  after- 
wards written  down  at  Ischia  of  Renan's 
critical  period. 

Those  seven  years  which  followed  gave  tone 
and  meaning  to  his  whole  existence.  They  ran 
parallel,  we  must  remember,  to  a  movement  at 
Oxford  precisely  the  reverse  of  that  whereby 
this  lonely  French  student,  sacrificing  tradition 
to  what  he  deemed  scientific  reason,  was  to  ex- 
change the  Catholic  creed  for  a  Pantheism  as 
vague  as  it  was  fascinating.  Newman  ended 
his  seven  years  of  argument  and  agony  by 
submitting  to  the  ancient  Church.  Renan, 
twenty-two  years  his  junior,  in  contact  with 


The   Breton   Peasant  19 

a  literature  and  philosophy — the  German — 
which  Herder,  Kant,  Hegel,  displayed  to 
his  admiring  view,  but  which  Oxford  had 
not  begun  to  study,  took  up  the  problem 
at  a  stage  further  on.  Church  and  Bible 
were  thrown  into  the  furnace  of  criticism. 
They  came  out  wondrously  transfigured, 
no  longer  supernatural,  but  mere  episodes 
in  a  process  to  be  measured  by  millions 
of  years,  during  which  the  blind  impulse 
that  Schopenhauer  defined  as  "  the  will  to 
live  "  moved  hither  and  thither  in  quest  of 
satisfaction.  Our  interest  in  Renan  will  al- 
ways be  centred  round  this  time.  We  know  it 
intimately,  thanks  to  his  own  letters  and  to 
Henriette's  replies,  every  page  on  both  sides 
remarkable  for  a  choice  of  words  which  is  en- 
hanced by  elevation  of  sentiment.  Not  in  any 
degree  picturesque,  they  are  finely  drawn, 
subtle,  impassioned,  at  high  moments  pathetic. 
And  through  them  all  Madame  Veuve  Renan 
appears,  a  touching  figure  in  her  lonesome 
room  at  Treguier — the  pattern  of  a  devout 
French  mother  who,  in  giving  her  son  to  God, 
had  left  her  home  desolate. 


2  o  Renan 

Mother  and  son  felt  it  grievously.  Ernest 
underwent,  in  his  first  months  at  St.  Nicolas, 
a  struggle  with  home-sickness  which  told  upon 
his  lessons.  It  was  a  gay  and  lively  house, 
pervaded  by  the  energy  of  M.  Dupanloup,  who, 
though  himself  no  deeply  read  classic,  proved 
to  be  an  "  incomparable  awakener."  He  spoke 
to  the  lads  every  evening  in  chapel,  set  them 
to  strive  one  against  another  in  themes  and 
declamations,  infected  them  with  his  own  taste 
for  rhetoric,  and,  on  the  whole,  bore  a  singular 
likeness  to  Victor  Cousin,  at  that  time  the  most 
brilliant  professor  in  Europe.  But  to  a  self- 
conscious  little  Breton,  with  manners  no  less 
timid  than  his  appearance  was  ungainly,  St. 
Nicolas  seemed  cold  and  sad.  He  was  always 
writing  home.  One  of  his  letters  fell  under 
Dupanloup's  observation  on  a  day  when  the 
places  were  to  be  read  out.  The  young  recruit 
was  only  fifth  or  sixth  in  French  composition. 
"  Ah,"  said  Dupanloup,  who  loved  his  own 
mother  fervently,  despite  his  irregular  birth, 
"  if  the  subject  had  been  that  of  a  letter  which 
I  read  this  morning,  Ernest  Renan  would  have 
been  first."     From  that  time  he  took  notice  of 


The  Breton   Peasant         2  i 


the  lad,  and  eclipsing  his  earlier  masters  by- 
talents  to  which  they  could  never  have  pre- 
tended, won  his  grateful  and  lasting  attach- 
ment. 

St.  Nicolas,  founded  in  the  seventeenth 
century  by  Adrien  de  Bourdoise,  had  been,  like 
the  more  celebrated  St.  Sulpice,  a  training- 
school  for  priests.  It  went  down  at  the  Revo- 
lution, and  rose  again  in  a  very  different  form. 
M.  de  Quelen,  Archbishop  of  Paris  under 
Louis  Philippe  until  1840,  was  a  prelate  of  the 
ancien  regime,  well  descended,  delicately  femi- 
nine in  his  looks,  who  wore  diamonds  on 
great  days,  but  was  edifying  after  his  manner. 
He  believed  in  the  tone  of  good  society,  and 
Dupanloup  had  that  tone,  as  well  as  rarer 
gifts.  Neither  the  Archbishop  nor  his  protege 
was  much  acquainted  with  divinity  ;  the  Fa- 
thers were  to  them  venerable  names,  the  School- 
men not  readable.  And  Dupanloup,  gather- 
ing his  two  hundred  pupils,  lay  and  clerical, 
from  all  sides,  while  he  made  the  wealthy 
pay  for  the  destitute  in  a  way  that  spared  the 
most  sensitive  feelings,  was  intent  on  bringing 
out  poets,  literary  men,  and  public  speakers. 


2  2  Renan 

He  set  little  store  by  erudition.  But, 
observes  Renan,  the  seminary  has  in  France 
one  advantage  over  the  university  :  it  does 
not  burden  the  aspiring  lad  with  classic 
dogmas  and  cast-iron  programmes.  None 
who  are  strangers  to  modern  French  life  will 
understand  how  much  is  contained  in  this 
single  sentence.  M.  Taine  has  denounced  the 
Chinese  inefficiency  of  a  central  Board,  always 
behind  the  times,  pedantic  and  absolute,  which 
sacrifices  original  genius  to  red  tape,  and 
which  creates  not  inventors  or  explorers  but 
functionaries.  At  St.  Nicolas  the  Romantic 
literature  had  fair  play  ;  Lamartine  and  Hugo 
were  subjects  of  everlasting  discussion.  The 
Abbe  Richard  taught  history  on  the  newest 
principles ;  and  his  successor,  though  in- 
capable as  a  master,  read  to  his  class  extracts 
from  Michelet,  which  intoxicated  Renan, 
making  him  dream  at  night  of  that  most 
musical  prose. 

Yet  we  remark  two  things,  not  without  sig- 
nificance. The  young  scholar  often  failed  in 
his  French  essay  ;  and  when  writing  home  he 
kept  to  the  simple,  unaffected  style  which  he 


The  Breton   Peasant         23 

had  brought  from  Treguier.  His  own  ex- 
planation of  our  first  point  reveals  the  man  ; 
he  "  could  not  feel  an  interest  in  what  he  had 
not  thought  out  for  himself."  The  second  is 
a  mere  but  striking  consequence  of  the  first. 
Rhetoric  seldom  thinks  for  itself  :  it  loves  an 
argument  ready  made.  It  flourishes  among 
Southerners ;  and  though  Renan  boasted  occa- 
sionally of  his  Gascon  blood,  he  distrusted 
the  loud,  empty  eloquence  which,  in  Barere  for 
example,  could  serve  any  cause  at  a  moment's 
warning.  For  one  who,  in  his  finest  pages,  was 
hardly  ever  to  be  rhetorical,  it  was  a  sign  of 
character  that  he  refused  to  imitate  Dupan- 
loup.  Not  without  meaning,  also,  does  he 
observe,  "  At  no  time  in  my  life  was  I  obedi- 
ent ;  I  have  been  docile  and  submissive,  but 
always  to  a  spiritual  principle,  never  to  co- 
ercion." There  speaks  the  Celt  and  the 
idealist. 

He  won  no  prizes  at  St.  Nicolas  for  French 
or  Latin  verse.  But  all  knowledge  came  easy 
to  him  ;  the  delicate  Breton  was  never  ill,  and 
he  showed  not  the  least  symptom,  then  or 
afterwards,  of  that  French  ailment,  la  nevrose. 


24  Renan 

He  had,  in  fact,  a  splendid  constitution,  which 
long  resisted  the  want  of  exercise,  mental 
vicissitudes,  travels  in  Eastern  climates,  and 
the  strain  of  work  that  paused  for  no  consider- 
ation down  to  his  dying  day. 

From  his  correspondence  a  pleasing  yet  often 
melancholy  picture  might  be  sketched  of  the 
poor  clerical  student  and  his  widowed  mother, 
while  Henriette,  earning  her  bread  in  Paris  on 
such  hard  terms,  is  always  the  good  angel  of 
the  story.     She  went  to  see   him  whenever  it 
was  allowed.     Ernest  is  full  of  anxiety  about 
the  winter  at  home  ;   wood  is  dear,  and  a  cup 
of  warm  coffee,  his  mother's  only  gratification, 
costs  money  ;    but  she  ought  to  indulge  her- 
self.    His  own  bourse  did  not  provide  him  with 
clothes.     There    was    trouble    in    getting    an 
overcoat ;    and  if  Henriette  were  not  there  to 
mend  his  linen,  he  would  have  been  put  to 
shame,  like   many  another   famous  youngster 
in  the  world's  unfeeling  annals.     He  had  per- 
suaded two  of  his  comrades  at  home  to  follow 
his  example  and    enter    St.    Nicolas.     They 
arrived  ;    but  after  a  while  Guyomar,  his  best 
friend,  went  back  to  Brittany,  and  died  there 


The  Breton   Peasant         25 

of  consumption  ;  Liart  could  not  live  in  the 
Parisian  air,  and  he,  too,  gave  up  the  chances 
of  metropolitan  success.  Renan  held  out,  won 
distinctions,  was  "  crowned "  in  public  five 
times  on  the  same  prize  day,  Henriette  looking 
on,  and  already  cherished  in  a  stubborn  silent 
fashion  the  resolve  to  make  his  way  in  Paris. 
Others  might  serve  the  Church  elsewhere  ;  he 
would  devote  himself  to  the  saving  of  souls  in 
that  fierce  Babylon.  A  sure  instinct  led  him, 
even  so  young,  towards  the  path  of  success  and 
fame. 

He  was  now  seeing  history  as  on  an  illumi- 
nated page.  He  heard  the  sound  of  Blanqui's 
insurrection,  May  12,  1839;  attended  the 
Archbishop's  requiem  ;  listened  to  Lacordaire 
and  Ravignan,  the  first  of  French  pulpit 
orators ;  saw  Napoleon's  second  funeral,  on 
that  bleak  day  in  1840  ;  and  found  a  place  in 
Notre  Dame,  when  the  Comte  de  Paris  was 
baptized,  May  2,  1841.  In  the  autumn  of 
that  year  he  went  home,  at  the  charge  of  Hen- 
riette, who  was  always  finding  money  for  every 
one's  wants  but  her  own.  In  January  1842, 
he    had  left  St.  Nicolas,  M.  Dupanloup,    the 


26  R 


enan 


writing  of  Latin  verse  and  French  rhetoric. 
He  was  transferred  to  Issy,  the  country  house 
where  young  ecclesiastics  learnt  logic  and 
metaphysics,  took  their  minor  orders,  and  were 
prepared  to  enter  the  "  great  seminary  "  of 
St.  Sulpice. 

An  entirely  new  chapter  was  opening  for 
him.  Henriette,  in  January  1841,  had  quitted 
her  ungrateful  task  of  teaching  in  Paris,  and 
had  accepted  a  position  as  governess  in  the 
household  of  Count  Andrew  Zamoyski,  a  Polish 
noble.  Traversing  the  Black  Forest  in  deep 
snow,  she  had  met  her  new  friends  at  Vienna 
and  gone  with  them  over  the  Carpathians,  to 
their  great  house  at  Clemensoff,  where  she 
remained,  except  when  the  family  was  moving 
about,  during  the  next  ten  years.  Her  suffer- 
ings and  solitude  had  imprinted  a  stern  char- 
acter on  the  mind  which  was  from  early  days 
disposed  to  severe  thoughts.  She  was  always, 
perhaps,  inclined  towards  Jansenism.  Little  by 
little  she  had  lost  confidence  in  her  Church 
altogether  ;  but  of  that  momentous  change 
not  a  syllable  had  been  whispered  in  her 
brother's  hearing.     If  he  was  to  go  the   same 


The  Breton   Peasant         27 


way,  he  must  find  it  out  for  himself.  So  far, 
caught  up  in  the  literary  tournaments  of  his 
class  and  in  superficial  studies,  he  had  taken  his 
vocation  more  or  less  for  granted.  He  did  not 
know  his  own  mind.  A  few  months  of  reading 
in  philosophy  were  to  teach  him  things  he  had 
never  contemplated  and  to  bring  home  to 
him  the  full  extent  of  the  sacrifice,  or  the  con- 
secration, demanded  of  a  Catholic  priest,  once 
his  engagement  was  taken.  The  decisive  hours 
of  his  life  were  now  to  follow.  What  would  be 
the  result  ? 


chapter  II 

ECLIPSE  OF  FAITH 

A  LITTLE  beyond  the  last  houses  of 
Vaugirard  stands,  in  its  own  vast  and 
agreeable  park,  the  mansion  of  Issy, 
which  serves  as  a  preparatory  school  to  St. 
Sulpice  for  clerics  who  are  studying  their 
"  philosophy,"  The  building  is  not  remark- 
able, but  its  central  feature  is  a  pavilion,  light 
and  elegant  in  style,  profusely  painted  inside 
with  Renaissance  emblems,  which  are  due  to 
Queen  Margot,  otherwise  Marguerite  de  Valois, 
first  wife  of  Henry  IV,  who  resided  here  from 
1606  till  her  death  in  1616.  After  many 
changes  the  place  was  given  in  1655  ^^  ^• 
Olier,  who  founded  the  Sulpician  order.  This 
eminent  man  has  never  been  canonized.  He 
displayed  in  his  own  person  an  austere  piety, 
mingled  with  raptures  and  revelations  on  which 
he  set  no  great  value.     The  group  to  which  he 

38 


Rclipse  of  Faith  29 

belonged  had  little  in  common  with  St.  Francis 
de  Sales  or  the  Company  of  Jesus ;  but  in  many- 
ways  it  reminds  us  of  the  early  medieval  monks, 
especially  by  a  certain  spirit  of  quietness  and 
freedom  which  left  room  for  individuals  to 
shape  their  own  course. 

The  Sulpicians  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  a 
religious  order  ;  they  form  a  congregation  of 
secular  priests.  That  ill-natured  historian,  the 
Due  de  Saint  Simon,  despised  them  as  much 
as  he  hated  the  Jesuits ;  he  mocks  at  their 
"  extreme  platitude,"  their  cowardice,  and 
their  servile  fear  of  the  great  Society  in  its 
palmy  days.  He  could  not  understand  the 
motives  on  which  they  shrank  from  the  world's 
notice  ;  why  they  dwelt  in  humble  retirement, 
satisfied  to  train  the  clergy  who  were  entrusted 
to  them  by  the  bishops  from  every  part  of 
France.  But  in  Canada  they  acquired  autho- 
rity and  large  possessions,  which  they  still 
retain  ;  while  in  the  United  States  they  have 
won  a  reputation  by  their  success  in  managing 
the  diocesan  seminaries. 

Their  fame  is,  however,  collective ;  and 
their  publications  are,  by  preference,  unsigned. 


3  o  Renan 

Literature  has  always  been  to  them  the 
impersonal  undertaking  which  it  was  to  the 
Benedictines  of  St.  Maur.  They  looked  with 
apprehension  upon  the  aspiring  Dupanloup, 
whom  their  silence  appeared  to  censure. 
It  must,  indeed,  be  admitted  that  from  the 
mixed  school  of  St.  Nicolas,  despite  its  attrac- 
tions, not  a  candidate  was  gained  for  holy 
orders  outside  the  clerical  bourses.  St.  Sul- 
pice  received  students  from  every  French 
diocese  ;  it  brought  them  up  on  a  system 
which  had  not  changed  since  the  days  of 
Bossuet  and  Olier,  and  which  was  as  unlike  as 
it  well  could  be  to  Dupanloup's  literary  forcing- 
house.  In  metaphysics  St.  Sulpice  was  Car- 
tesian ;  in  Christian  evidences  it  would  take 
no  account  of  Chateaubriand  or  De  Maistre  ; 
it  became  almost  passionate  in  its  opposition 
to  Lamennais,  whose  apologetics  frankly  gave 
up  the  argument  from  reason  to  seek  refuge 
in  the  "  universal  testimony "  of  mankind. 
But  it  would  not  have  refused  to  join  hands 
with  Paley,  Thomas  Reid,  and  the  moderate 
orthodox,  to  whom  was  owing  the  so-called 
philosophy  of  common  sense. 


Eclipse  of  Faith  3  i 

The  park  at  Issy,  with  its  painted  chapels  and 
images  of  saints,  had  already  witnessed  a  dis- 
cussion of  first  principles  inside  that  historic 
arbour  in  which  Bossuet,  Fenelon,  and  the 
Abbe  Tronson  drew  up  their  thirty-four 
articles  on  "  true  and  false  Mysticism  "  in  1694. 
It  contained  several  fine  pieces  of  water,  which 
froze  in  January  on  the  high  ground  open  to- 
wards the  north.  Long  lines  of  hornbeam 
made  in  it  pleasant  alleys,  under  the  shade  of 
which  young  Renan  passed  his  hours,  reading, 
debating  with  his  own  mind,  drinking  deep 
draughts  of  philosophic  doubt.  He  was  not 
like  Sainte  Beuve,  tormented  by  a  thirst  after 
the  divine  life  ;  but  his  dawning  instinct  for 
art  and  letters  enabled  him  to  find  satisfaction 
in  the  exercises  of  the  chapel.  No  sooner  did 
he  grasp  the  import  of  logic,  with  its  immedi- 
ate application  to  problems  that  he  had  never 
before  dreamt  of,  than  his  whole  being  under- 
went a  crisis.  He  had  hitherto  believed  in  his 
teachers  as  if  they  were  the  oracles  of  God. 
Now  he  resolved,  in  accordance  with  the 
maxims  of  Descartes,  to  take  nothing  for  cer- 
tain that  was  not  clear  and  evident  to  himself. 


3  2  Renan 

Writing  to  his  mother,  he  describes  the  place 
in  charming  though  not  vivid  colours.  He 
was  learning  from  Telemaque  how  to  paint 
landscapes  and  persons  by  "  moral  touches  "  ; 
for  apart  from  this  human  aspect  they  left  him 
unmoved.  Turgenieff,  the  admirable  Russian, 
whose  power  was  of  a  different  kind,  has  cen- 
sured the  indefinite  outlines  which  he  marked 
in  Kenan's  autobiography.  But  we  cannot 
complain  that  their  disciple  fails  in  sketching 
his  Sulpician  masters — M.  Gosselin,  the  polite 
and  learned  superior  of  Issy,  who  became 
his  spiritual  director ;  M.  Gottofrey,  who 
taught  metaphysics  while  utterly  scorning 
them  ;  and  M.  Pinault,  professor  of  mathe- 
matics, who  despised  science  altogether.  M. 
Pinault  led  on  a  band  of  mystical  scholars  to 
high  devotion  ;  he  was  a  sort  of  Catholic  M. 
Littre,  too  original  for  the  society  into  which 
he  had  passed  from  the  University.  A  char- 
acter yet  more  strange  was  Hanique,  the  lay 
hall-porter,  saintly  and  simple,  recognized  as  a 
light  in  things  of  the  spirit,  and  consulted  by 
the  ardent  youths  who  exalted  holiness  above 
knowledge. 


Eclipse   of  Faith  3  3 

Renan  took  his  own  way,  as  he  did  at  all 
times.  He  was  not  a  favourite  with  his 
companions.  M.  I'Abbe  Cognat,  who  knew 
him  well  at  the  seminary,  and  others  not 
unqualified  to  judge,  have  recognized  his 
own  somewhat  too  flattering  portrait  of  the 
reserved  and  silent  rustic — his  manners  had 
still  much  to  gain — who  would  not  follow 
M.  Pinault's  direction,  nor  lose  faith  in  rea- 
son though  it  confounded  him,  and  whose 
verdict  on  the  professor  of  philosophy  was  the 
ironical  but  just  remark  that  in  metaphysics 
you  cannot  have  a  master. 

His  solitude  was  unbroken.  For  two  years  he 
never  went  into  Paris.  For  months  he  did  not 
stir  beyond  the  park  at  Issy.  Reading  grew  to 
be  a  devouring  passion,  which  absorbed  the 
hours  he  should  have  given  to  exercise.  It  was 
the  freshman's  year  with  him,  full  of  excitement, 
unsettling  and  feverish  like  any  other  initiation 
into  the  realities  of  life.  Young  men  commonly 
pass  out  of  this  green  sickness  to  find  themselves 
acquiescing  in  the  beliefs  which  they  were 
taught  as  children.  With  Ernest  Renan  it 
was  not  to  be  thus.     Long  before  he  had  taken 

3 


3  4  Renan 

up  Hebrew  or  could  tell  what  the  critics  be- 
yond Rhine  were  making  of  the  Bible,  he  had 
quitted  his  hereditary  moorings  and  was  drift- 
ing out  to  sea. 

From  his  letters  this  important  conclusion, 
which  seems  to  be  denied  in  his  Reminiscences^ 
may  be  safely  drawn.  To  his  mother,  of 
course,  he  gives  no  hint  of  the  doubts  that 
assail  him.  But  they  find  expression  in  care- 
fully chosen  language  when  he  is  talking  on 
paper  with  Henriette.  In  a  year,  he  tells 
her,  (Sept.  15,  1842,)  he  had  learnt  as 
much  as  the  human  race  learns  in  a  century. 
The  result  is  chiefly  negative,  indeed  ;  but 
philosophy,  as  the  Germans  handle  it,  com- 
pels men  to  see  the  great  problems  if  it  does 
not  answer  them ;  it  teaches  us  to  reason 
inflexibly  and  to  look  at  all  things  without 
veils.  He  is  enamoured  of  Kant.  If  Hen- 
riette goes  to  Konigsberg,  let  her  make  a 
pilgrimage  to  the  old  philosopher's  tomb. 
Such  was  the  outcome  of  Kenan's  first  year 
at  Issy, 

While  he  was  losing  his  way  in  this  dark 
forest  of  speculation,  poverty  kept  close  at  his 


Eclipse   of  Faith  3  5 

heels.  He  had  no  "^  money  to  buy  German 
grammars ;  he  could  win  acquaintance  with 
Goethe  and  Schiller  only  by  using  a  fellow- 
student's  volumes.  His  clerical  attire  gave 
him  much  concern  ;  not  because  it  was  a  mark 
of  the  calling  which  he  had  begun  to  think 
unsuited  to  his  talents  and  temperament,  but 
because  the  single  cassock,  worn  every  day, 
showed  too  many  patches.  If  he  did  not  know 
where  to  find  the  fifteen  or  twenty  francs 
required  for  his  Teutonic  dictionary  and  its 
auxiliary  tomes,  how  could  he  secure  the  sixty- 
five  which  a  decent  soutane  cost  in  those  days  ? 
A  correspondence,  touching  and  anxious, 
passed  between  him  and  the  good  mother  away 
in  Brittany,  on  this  matter  of  Ernest's  wardrobe. 
Henriette,  in  her  grand  but  forlorn  castle, 
among  the  far-off  Polish  woods,  sent  what 
means  were  at  command ;  but  we  read  with 
sympathy  and  sadness  of  Madame  Veuve 
Rcnan  putting  together  all  the  silver  she  had 
and  dispatching  it  to  Issy  in  April  1843.  It 
arrived  at  a  critical  moment.  His  superiors 
had  invited  Renan  to  receive  the  tonsure, 
which  would  have  given  him  the  rights  and 


3  6  Renan 

status  of  a  cleric,  though  binding  him  to  no 
farther  step.  Was  it  possible  for  him  with  a 
good  conscience  to  accept  ?  The  question 
had  a  twofold  bearing.  His  mother  would 
suppose  that,  if  he  asked  for  delay,  some 
natural  feelings  were  at  work  within  him. 
But,  however  that  might  be,  the  trouble  was 
of  another  sort,  and  he  knew  it.  His  faith  in 
Revelation  had  undergone  a  great  shock. 

Nothing  is  more  characteristic  in  this  lad  of 
twenty  than  his  discreet  way  of  handling  the 
persons  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  Smil- 
ingly, the  later  Renan  ascribes  it  to  his  Jesuit 
politeness  and  clerical  reserve.  But  there  was 
another  explanation.  As  a  child  he  had  wit- 
nessed how  frail  is  the  security  of  the  very 
poor  ;  he  was  alarmed  when  he  thought  of  the 
wild  waters  raging  outside  that  peaceful  haven 
in  which  he  lay  sheltered  ;  and  he  dreaded  to 
make  shipwreck  of  his  existence.  He  was  never 
insincere  ;  but  he  acted  with  a  peasant's  wari- 
ness, finely  touched  by  genius,  moulding  itself 
in  every  phrase  and  at  each  conjuncture  on 
the  qualities  of  those  who  could  help  or  injure 
him.     Not  even  with  Henricttc  was   he  com- 


Eclipse   of  Faith  37 


pletely  frank  at  the  present  stage.  To  his 
mother  he  speaks  as  if  her  advice  would  be 
almost  decisive.  She,  poor  woman,  replies, 
"  Ernest,  my  dear  Ernest,  obey  the  inspira- 
tions of  grace."  She  would  never  be  a  hin- 
drance to  him.  Her  letters  are  beautiful  in 
their  warmth  and  simplicity.  M.  Gosselin 
decides  that  he  ought  to  take  the  step.  On 
May  12,  1843,  he  consents ;  but  a  warning 
word  falls  from  his  pen  :  he  is  "  ready  for  the 
sacrifice." — we  think  of  Racine's  l-phigenie ; — 
however,  he  ends  by  assuring  Mme.  Renan 
that  calm  has  returned  after  the  storm. 

In  three  weeks  all  is  changed.  His  letter  of 
consent,  he  writes  home  on  June  6,  was  a 
"  fatal "  one  ;  at  the  last  moment  he  has 
drawn  back.  The  page  that  follows  is  cer- 
tainly the  most  moving  and  sincere  that  he 
ever  achieved.  It  is  one  long  cry  of  agony 
lest  his  mother  should  doubt  the  affection  he 
bore  her,  and  refuse  to  bless  him,  to  pardon 
him  ;  yet  how,  he  reiterates  passionately,  could 
he  be  unfaithful  to  the  voice  of  conscience  ? 
He  meant  every  word  of  all  this ;  but  only  an 
acknowledgment  which   would  have    terrified 


3  8  Renan 

the  unhappy  woman,  as  if  it  were  sacrilege, 
could  henceforth  clear  up  the  situation. 
And  he  felt  incapable  of  making  it.  Between 
these  two  hearts  a  dreadful  ambiguity  had 
fallen  like  a  veil.  M.  Gosselin  added  a  few 
lines,  approving  of  Ernest's  hesitation.  The 
widow  answered  with  infinite  tenderness.  She 
was  resigned  but  not  enlightened.  And  so  the 
first  crisis  came  to  an  end. 

Excellent  M.  Gosselin,  learned  in  ancient 
lore,  but  not  in  the  secrets  of  the  modern 
spirit  !  His  penitent  might  endeavour  to 
lay  bare  his  heart ;  it  was  a  sealed  book 
to  the  director.  M.  Gottofrey,  a  young 
priest  of  twenty-eight,  with  clear  English 
features —  he  was  not  altogether  French — 
sensitive  and  acute,  perceived  in  this  eternal 
reading  and  sharp  argumentation  of  Renan 
symptoms  which  had  escaped  all  others.  In 
a  scholastic  tournament  the  young  sceptic  had 
broken  a  lance  too  vigorously  against  received 
views.  His  master  ended  the  tilting-match 
at  once,  took  him  aside,  and  after  enlarging  on 
the  perils  of  overmuch  study,  the  futility  of 
mere  science,  and  the  arrogance  of  Rational- 


Eclipse   of  Faith  3  9 


ism,  cried  in  a  passionate  voice,  "  You  are  no 
Christian  !  "  Renan  was  thunderstruck.  He 
lay  awake  all  night,  and  the  terrible  words 
echoed  around  him  ;  they  had  gone  right 
home.  M.  Gosselin  did  his  best  to  comfort 
the  troubled  youth.  M.  Manier,  sensible  and 
moderate,  advised  him  not  to  get  lost  in 
details ;  the  Christian  religion  should  be 
judged  as  a  whole.  This  amiable  man  seems 
to  have  felt  that  Ernest  had  no  vocation  to  the 
priesthood  ;  for  he  was  the  first  to  hint  that 
in  the  Ecole  Normale  his  gifts  as  a  teacher 
might  be  employed  to  edification. 

This  episode  we  have  related  at  some  length 
as  offering  a  genuine  clue  to  events  which 
were  afterwards  thrown  out  of  perspective 
by  Renan's  Oriental  studies.  His  faith  was 
eclipsed,  and  in  fact  all  but  extinguished,  by 
the  new  view  in  philosophy  which  he  was  de- 
riving partly  from  Malebranche  and  yet  more 
from  what  he  could  ascertain  of  German  meta- 
physics. Though  he  made  his  own  Descartes' 
abstract  and  inflexible  rule  of  evidence, — clear 
ideas, — the  sovereign  conception  to  which  he 
was  yielding  is  rather  a  tendency  than  a  for- 


40  Renan 

mula.  Science,  he  felt,  was  the  only  certain 
truth ;  everything  else  an  hypothesis  or  a 
dream.  By  pure  physical  induction,  founded 
on  experience,  the  world  might  be  interpreted 
and  subdued,  or  else  not  at  all. 

Such  is  the  language  of  Bacon  ;  and  Male- 
branche  added  that  in  the  order  of  facts 
no  special  interpositions  of  the  Divine 
Will  are  to  be  allowed.  In  other  words, 
general  laws  must  be  identified  with  God's 
Providence.  This  recondite  axiom,  to  which 
Malebranche  gave  an  orthodox  meaning, 
appears  again  and  again  in  Kenan's  treatises ; 
we  may  term  it  his  great  first  truth,  never 
proved  but  assumed  as  undeniable.  Followed 
out  to  its  consequences,  it  seemed  to  make  the 
name  and  idea  of  Deity  superfluous.  The  order 
of  facts  is  sufficient  for  itself ;  what  more  do 
we  want  ?  Miracle  and  revelation  cannot  be 
admitted,  since  they  would  break  the  supreme, 
all-encompassing  law,  and  disclose  personality 
other  than  our  own  in  the  universe.  Thus 
Renan  argued,  substituting  an  ideal  system  for 
the  living  God.  From  this  ground  he  never  re- 
treated and  never  advanced.  Only  a  year  or  two 


Eclipse   of  Faith  41 

went  by  before  he  came  to  realize,  and  joyfully 
to  maintain,  the  principle  of  scientific  Atheism, 
which  he  was  now  unconsciously  making  his 
own.  We  ought,  nevertheless,  to  bear  in 
mind  that  philosophers  of  schools  so  different 
as  were  Leibnitz  and  Stuart  Mill,  would  not 
have  allowed  his  reasoning.  To  quote  only 
the  latter  :  "  Science,"  observes  Mill,  "  con- 
tains nothing  repugnant  to  the  supposition 
that  every  event  which  takes  place  results  from 
a  specific  volition  of  the  presiding  Power,  pro- 
vided that  this  Power  adheres  in  its  particular 
volitions  to  general  laws  laid  down  by  itself." 

But  there  was  nothing  more  distasteful  to 
this  fluctuating  elusive  temper  than  statements 
he  could  not  recall.  Though  science  had  be- 
come his  only  source  of  truth,  he  manipulated 
its  assumptions  with  a  poet's  freedom  ;  when 
least  original  in  matter,  he  was  always  himself 
in  manner.  We  can  never  mistake  a  page 
written  by  him,  even  at  this  youthful 
stage,  for  any  other  man's  ;  it  is  always 
classical  in  expression,  tinged  with  subdued 
light  as  in  a  dream,  self-controlled,  and, 
even  where  it  seems  agitated,  imperturbable. 


4  2  Renan 

Renan  was  kind-hearted  but  not  passionate  ; 
he  could  scarcely  endure  the  soldier's  trade, 
which  courted,  as  well  as  inflicted,  wounds  and 
slaughter.  He  sought  no  authority,  felt  no 
enthusiasm  for  any  propaganda,  did  all  he  knew 
to  make  his  vision  achromatic ;  then  he  sat 
down  by  the  side  of  the  process,  watching 
how  it  would  turn  out. 

Life  thus  became  an  experiment  in  chemis- 
try, the  will  counting  as  a  cipher,  to  be  elimin- 
ated before  anything  was  done.  But  while 
his  conceit  of  himself  as  a  purely  reasoning 
machine  proved  fatal  to  Kenan's  Christianity, 
his  imagination  took  fire  at  the  mystic  spring 
of  German  romance.  For  it  would  be  the 
easiest  matter  in  the  world  to  show  that  Kant, 
but  much  more  Fichte  and  Hegel,  had  but 
thrown  into  severe  logical  forms  the  old  Pan- 
theism, or  mystery  of  the  All  and  One,  which 
colours  every  Teutonic  writer  of  name,  from 
Eckhardt  and  Behmen  to  Angelus  Silesius. 
Strictly-measuring  science  did  not  invent  it, 
and  cannot  be  charged  with  it.  The  Faust 
legend,  which  even  now  captivated  Renan,  is 
poetry,  not  experiment,  a  flower  of  the  fancy 


Eclipse   of  Faith  43 

which  never  blossomed  out  of  modern  testing- 
tubes.  That  which  tempts  the  physical  ex- 
plorer to  disbelieve  in  God,  is  his  own  absorp- 
tion in  disclosures  where  personality  does  not 
count.  Whether  we  may  deal  after  this 
method  with  religion  is,  to  say  the  least,  a 
problem ;  all  men  except  an  inconsiderable 
few  have  until  now  decided  against  it,  or  have 
taken  their  whole  nature,  moral  and  mental, 
as  a  guide  to  the  divine. 

And  our  young  scholar  did  that,  too.  The 
flash  of  lightning,  he  says,  came  and  went 
again,  leaving  him  unaffected.  He  decided  on 
entering  St.  Sulpice.  Henriette  had  for- 
warded by  his  brother  Alain  five  hundred  and 
fifty  francs  to  defray  his  holiday  at  home  and 
the  cost  of  new  clothes.  He  spent  a  happy  two 
months  in  Brittany,  and,  on  October  13,  1843, 
took  up  his  abode  in  the  gaunt  barrack-like 
building  which  occupies  the  site  of  M.  Olicr's 
seminary.  Within,  all  things  were  as  that 
self-denying  founder  had  left  them.  M.  Gar- 
nier,  the  superior-general,  was  upwards  of 
eighty-four.  He  had  known  M.  Emery, 
Napoleon's  favourite  ;  he  spoke  of  "  Monsieur 


44  Ren  an 

Bossuet "  and  "  Monsieur  Fenelon,"  as  if  the 
last  of  the  Doctors  had  been  calling  on  him 
yesterday.  M.  Hugon  had  served  as  acolyte 
when  Talleyrand  was  consecrated  in  1788,  and 
the  Saturday  after  had  accused  himself  in 
confession  of  "  rash  judgment  concerning  the 
piety  of  a  holy  bishop."  For  M.  d'Autun 
had  behaved,  during  the  ceremony,  with  scant 
reverence. 

These  excellent  men  offered  a  contrast  to 
the  raptures  and  singularities  of  M.  Pinault 
and  the  other  "  saints  "  at  Issy.  They  were 
neither  mystics  nor  metaphysicians.  M.  Gar- 
nier,  an  Oriental  scholar  of  enormous  learning, 
had  written  cahiers,  or  lectures,  sound  on  points 
of  language,  but  untouched  by  modern  critic- 
ism. He  did  not  teach  now  ;  his  pupil  and 
successor  was  a  tiny  Breton,  M.  Le  Hir.  This 
orthodox  luminary,  who  died  in  1868  on  the  eve 
of  the  Vatican  Council,  to  which  he  had  been 
invited,  knew  the  latest  opinions  at  Tubingen, 
had  examined  the  Leben  Jesu  of  David  Fred- 
erick Strauss,  and,  according  to  Rcnan,  was 
perfectly  candid  in  his  quotations,  while  re- 
maining as  orthodox  as  ever.     A  saint  and  a 


Eclipse  of  Faith  45 

savant^  M.  Le  Hir  could  appropriate  from 
Gesenius  or  Ewald  whatever  he  deemed  to  be 
not  incompatible  with  his  creed.  But  in  ques- 
tions of  divinity  other  masters  ruled  over  him, 
German  Catholics  illustrious  at  that  time,  such 
as  Mohler  and  the  rising  school  of  Munich.  He 
had  passed  beyond  the  "  old  French  Scholas- 
ticism," we  are  told — a  system  which  Renan 
took  for  the  one  and  only  standard  of  belief, 
with  consequences  disastrous  to  him  as  to  it. 

This  Gallican  school,  it  must  be  remarked, 
has  played  in  modern  Catholic  movements  a 
part  not  unlike  that  of  Calvinism  elsewhere  ; 
by  its  excessive  and  forbidding  formulas  it  has 
called  out  a  reaction  not  less  exaggerated, 
tending  on  the  one  side  to  infidelity,  on  the 
other  to  superstition.  Its  fatal  defect  was 
the  severance  between  dogma  and  history.  It 
knew  nothing  of  development.  It  reduced 
Church  and  Bible  to  a  code  in  which  at  the 
close  of  propositions,  often  debatable,  still 
oftener  not  scaled  with  supreme  authority, 
and  detached  from  the  living  context  in  which 
alone  their  importance  could  be  estimated, 
the   formula  "  Est  de  fide  "   (it  is  matter  of 


46  Ren  an 

faith)  appeared  with  a  frequency  as  great  as 
that  of  the  death-penalty  in  secular  enact- 
ments. French  divines  were  narrow,  forensic, 
curiously  ignorant  of  the  laws  upon  which 
ecclesiastical  growth  had  gone  forward.  Time 
and  change  they  did  not  allow  among  their 
categories ;  and  they  assumed  that  all  men, 
everywhere,  moved  on  the  same  level  of  under- 
standing. When  Ernest  Renan  brought  his 
new  idea  of  science  face  to  face  with  their  old 
theology,  a  conflict  was  inevitable  and  speedily 
broke  out. 

At  St.  Sulpice  the  rule  of  freedom  prevailed 
to  a  degree  which  contrasted  singularly  with 
Napoleon's  iron-bound  institutions ;  it  was  a 
house  founded  rather  on  the  old  independent 
University  of  the  Middle  Ages  than  on  the 
military  code  which  reigns  supreme  over  all 
State-schools  in  France.  A  young  man,  left 
to  his  own  devices,  might  pass  years  without 
receiving  direction  from  his  superiors ;  the 
machine  went  on  of  itself,  and  there  seems  to 
have  existed  no  espionage  in  the  establishment 
at  Paris.  On  the  other  hand,  a  certain  coldness 
dwelt  in  the  atmosphere  ;    friendships  did  not 


Rclipse  of  Faith  47 

easily  spring  up  among  strangers  brought  to- 
gether as  in  an  hostelry  from  the  four  corners 
of  the  land.  Renan  was  more  lonely  than  ever. 
During  his  two  years  of  residence  he  lived  as  a 
hermit  in  the  great  city.  Acquaintance  he 
had  scarcely  any  at  all.  Once  a  week  he 
trudged  along  the  Rue  Vaugirard  with  his 
companions  to  spend  an  afternoon  at  Issy, 
according  to  the  good  old  monastic  rule  which 
is  observed  by  colleges  abroad,  of  giving  the 
scholars  a  day's  villegiatura  by  way  of  relief 
from  the  city  air.  He  did  little  else  than  read, 
reflect,  write  home,  and  fix  his  mental  attitude 
on  the  problems  of  Christian  history  which 
were  now  troubling  him.  From  the  abstract 
discussions  of  first  principles  he  had  advanced 
into  a  thicket  where  innumerable  questions 
of  fact  solicited  his  attention.  Yet  he  yielded 
so  far  as  to  accept  the  tonsure  at  Christmas 
1843  from  Mgr.  Affre,  Archbishop  of  Paris, 
who  was  martyred  on  the  barricades  five  years 
later.  His  director  had  taken  the  responsibility 
of  a  step  which  appeared  only  becoming  if 
Renan  was  to  continue  his  studies  at  the 
Church's  expense.     Minor  orders  followed  on 


4  8  Renan 

June  5,  1844.  Madame  Renan  felt  supremely- 
happy.  But  her  son  was  approaching  a  de- 
cisive term — the  subdiaconate — which  would 
have  bound  him  as  by  vow  to  a  single  life  and 
permitted  no  turning  back  again.  To  faith 
all  things  are  possible  ;  how  if  he  had  already- 
made  shipwreck  of  his  faith  ? 

What  is  peculiar  in  this  young  man's  falling 
away  from  a  creed  so  venerable  and  majestic, 
is  the  silence,  the  utter  solitude,  in  which  he 
undid  every  link  of  the  golden  chain.  Others 
as  gifted  as  he  went  over  to  modern  ideas,  but 
on  crowded  paths  and  with  loud  acclaim. 
Victor  Hugo,  George  Sand,  Lamennais,  drew 
all  eyes  upon  their  defection.  Alfred  de 
Musset,  the  "  son  of  his  century,"  told  the 
secret  of  many  a  French  lad  when  he  wrote  : 
"  In  my  young  days,  innocent  as  I  was  and 
simple,  vice  came  before  me  as  a  world  admir- 
able and  immense.  The  moment  I  could,  I 
plunged  into  it  with  delight."  In  lycees 
beyond  counting,  the  tone  had  been  to  dis- 
believe in  God,  hate  Christ,  and  practise  the 
forbidden.  But  while  from  such  a  discipline 
Lacordaire   came   out   to   be   champion   of   a 


Kclipse   of  Faith  49 

despised  religion,  this  other  lonely  youth, 
modest,  edifying,  submissive  to  rule,  could  not 
find  in  his  Christian  bringing  up  any  motives 
that  would  countervail  the  objections  of  un- 
believers. 

He  disliked  Voltaire,  then  and  always. 
He  felt  a  strong  repugnance  to  the  campaign 
which  Michelet  and  Edgar  Quinet,  renowned 
University  professors,  were  directing  in  those 
years  against  the  Catholic  Church.  But  he 
felt  an  invincible  prejudice  which  would  not 
suffer  him  to  admit  Revelation  as  a  fact,  or 
miracles  as  probable  ;  and  thus  in  details  he 
was  at  one  with  Voltaire  and  the  Encyclopcedia. 
Antecedent  presumptions,  trust  in  a  good 
God,  which  the  devout  have  relied  upon,  and 
to  which  Newman  ascribed  a  weight  only  to 
be  put  aside  by  self-contradiction  in  the  mes- 
sage or  impossibility  in  its  announcements, 
were  made  by  Renan,  somewhat  after  the 
fashion  of  Hume,  reasons  for  doubting.  He 
demanded  proof  such  as  might  satisfy  a  board 
of  physicians  and  which  amounted  to  ocular 
demonstration.  When  that  was  not  forth- 
coming, he  renounced  the  Gospel. 

4 


5  o  Renan 

These  thoughts,  which  float  up  slowly  to 
the  surface  of  his  correspondence,  filled  his 
mind  between  October  1844,  when  he 
returned  from  vacation,  and  the  conclusive 
moment  a  year  later  that  saw  him  leaving 
St.  Sulpice.  "  Terrible  doubts  "  had,  indeed, 
assailed  him  as  he  went  up  to  the  altar  and  was 
repeating  the  words  of  the  Psalm,  "  The  Lord 
is  the  portion  of  mine  inheritance,"  while  the 
Archbishop  clipped  his  hair  in  token  of  that 
dedication.  He  put  them  from  him,  but  they 
were  not  silenced.  Reason,  he  learned  in  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  had  its  claims ;  it  must 
prove  the  credibility  of  Revelation  and  dis- 
cover grounds  for  submitting  to  the  Church. 
But  he  found  in  the  medieval  system  a 
strange  likeness  to  its  vast  cathedrals.  Therein 
he  beheld  "  grandeur,  wide  and  empty 
spaces,  but  nothing  solid."  What  were  its 
arguments  ?  He  answered,  "  triumphant 
syllogisms  built  on  the  void."  What  was  its 
fatal  defect  ?  Surely  the  "  want  of  his- 
torical criticism  due  to  the  confounding  of 
dates  and  environment."  He  was  mastering 
Hebrew   and   applying   his   new-found   know- 


Eclipse   of  Faith  5  i 

ledge  to  the  Bible-narratives,  not  in  the  least 
as  an  original  student,  but  with  ready  acquies- 
cence in  the  methods  of  his  German  text- 
books. Under  that  light  the  supernatural 
faded  away  ;  every  form  of  Christian  dogma 
perished  ;  of  religion  itself  nothing  was  left 
save  some  scattered  moral  elements,  without 
transcendent  source,  or  divine  sanction,  or 
scope  beyond _this  world.  The  critic  stood 
aloft  on  a  heap  of  ruins.  In  the  endeavour 
to  find  out  why  he  believed,  he  had  ceased  to 
believe  in  anything. 

Now,  then,  Renan  looked  about  for  an  issue 
which  would  take  him  without  observation  from 
one  camp  to  another.  He  had  got  leave  to 
attend  the  lectures  of  M.  de  Quatremere,  at 
the  College  de  France,  to  his  mother's  alarm 
but  his  own  gratification.  A  sign  of  the 
coming  tempest  falls  on  his  page  ;  he  has  no 
desire  to  begin  reciting  his  Breviary,  and 
therefore  will  not  be  a  subdeacon  yet.  We 
turn  to  the  correspondence  with  his  sister,  and 
find  him  a  little  more  open.  He  had  called 
the  tonsure  an  "  immolation,"  which  must 
have   awakened  in  Hcnriette  the  feeling  that 


5  2  Renan 

Ernest  had  confidences  to  make,  if  she  would 
but  encourage  him.  Two  years  previously, 
in  March  1843,  she  had  written,  "  I  blame 
myself  not  seldom  for  searching  into  your 
most  intimate  thoughts,  and  leading  you  to 
search  ;  but  how  can  I  conceal  what  is  in 
my  heart  ?  "  The  last  months  at  Issy,  she 
is  now  told,  in  a  letter  dated  April  16, 
1844,  were  vexed  by  unkindness  from  his 
companions.  He  dislikes  the  clerical  pro- 
fession ;  he  is  not  of  a  temper  to  live  with 
common  and  intriguing  spirits.  M.  Dupan- 
loup  has  offered  him  a  post  in  St.  Nicolas ; 
but  "  every  one  knows  what  a  masterful  man 
Dupanloup  is."  He  could,  indeed,  join  the 
Sulpicians,  and  they  would  welcome  so  success- 
ful a  scholar ;  but  he  prefers  a  solitary  and 
private  life,  independence  if  possible,  and  the 
means  of  research  to  be  obtained  in  Paris 
alone.     What  does  Henriette  advise  ? 

Among  these  considerations  one  which  took 
from  them  all  significance  had  found  expression. 
"  I  have  never  hesitated,"  says  the  young  man, 
"  except  as  desiring  to  know  where  the  truth 
was,  or  whether  it  commanded  that  I  should 


Eclipse   of  Faith  5  3 

serve  it  in  the  Church,  notwithstanding  the 
human  difficulties  which  I  could  not  hide  from 
myself.  But,  whether  I  embraced  the  clerical 
state  or  not, — I  will  say  more — let  my  senti- 
ments be  what  they  might  concerning  the 
religion  in  which  I  believed  that  I  had  found 
the  truth — a  life  serious  and  retired,  far  from 
superfluities  and  pleasures,  would  have  deter- 
mined my  choice  ;  and  that  is  what  I  pro- 
mised " — on  taking  the  tonsure.  He  adds 
prophetically,  "  Should  I  ever  become  a  vain 
and  futile  creature,  attached  to  the  despicable 
rewards  of  a  day,  or  to  an  opinion  more 
wretched  still  (I  do  not  speak  of  glory,  which 
is  no  vanity  if  we  can  wait  for  it),  then  I  should 
hold  that  I  had  been  faithless  to  my  engage- 
ment." 

Henriette  had  thrown  out  a  hope  of  some 
travelling  tutorship  in  Germany.  It  would 
give  him  a  respite,  should  nothing  better  fall 
in  his  way.  But  she  was  emphatically  against 
his  entering  St.  Nicolas  or  joining  St.  Sulpice. 
And  he  must  have  time.  With  a  generosity 
that  her  brother  could  never  forget,  she 
promised  him  a  year — two  years,  if  need   be 


5  4  Renan 

— of  freedom  at  her  own  cost ;  he  should 
see  a  little  of  the  world  ;  and  if  he  gave  up 
the  priesthood,  there  was  no  dishonour  ^in 
obeying  a  sensitive  conscience.  Her  letter  of 
February  28,  1845,  in  which  these  plans  are 
debated,  is  a  model  of  passionate  but  restrained 
eloquence,  not  stirring  the  deep  chord  of 
doubt  by  so  much  as  a  finger-tip,  but  insist- 
ing that  he  cannot  act  until  he  has  arrived  at 
a  "  clear  and  individual  decision."  Unlike 
Ernest,  she  knew  her  own  mind,  while  he  could 
perceive  reasons  on  both  sides  and  was  "  cruelly 
perplexed." 

His  answer,  on  April  11,  1845,  is,  at 
last,  candid.  "  If  the  end  of  man  were  joy," 
he  says  finely,  "  life  would  be  intolerable  to 
those  who  are  denied  it ;  but  when  we  have 
fixed  our  term  in  a  higher  world  we  arc  less 
troubled  by  what  passes  below."  Then  a 
note  is  sounded  which  was  to  echo  by  and  by 
in  his  most  famous  volume,  "  I  have  comforted 
myself  as  one  that  suffers  for  conscience'  sake 
and  for  virtue.  The  thought  of  that  Jesus  in 
the  Gospel,  so  pure,  fair,  and  calm,  so  little 
understood  by  those  who  worship  Him,  has 


Eclipse   of  Faith  5  5 

been  above  all  a  wonderful  support  to  me." 
We  are  put  in  mind  of  George  Eliot  translating 
with  tears,  before  the  crucifix,  from  the  Lehen 
Jesu^  which  was  to  make  such  consoling 
thoughts  impossible  for  a  great  and  unhappy- 
multitude.  Renan  goes  on,  "  I  don't  think 
that  I  ever  told  you  the  real  motives  ...  I 
will  tell  you  now.  Take  it  in  a  single  word  : 
I  do  not  believe  enough."  The  Catholic 
Church  was  once  to  him  the  absolute  truth. 
Could  it  be  so  still,  he  would  devote  himself 
to  it.  But  reason  is  awake  ;  it  puts  in  its 
claim,  and  the  absolute  has  vanished.  Catho- 
licism holds  him  no  more. 

"  I  shall  love  it,  I  shall  admire  it  always," 
he  exclaims  ;  "  it  has  cherished  and  given  joy 
to  my  childhood  ;  it  has  made  me  what  I  am  ; 
its  morality  (I  mean  that  of  the  Gospel)  shall 
ever  be  my  rule  ;  I  shall  ever  have  in  aversion 
the  sophists  that  assail  it  with  slander  and  bad 
faith  ;  they  comprehend  it  even  less  than  others 
who  receive  it  with  closed  eyes.  Jesus,  above 
all,  shall  be  my  God.  But  when  we  come  down 
from  this  pure  Christianity  .  .  .  forgive  me, 
Henriette — I   do  not  cling  to  these  thoughts, 


5  6  Renan 

but  I  doubt ;  and  it  does  not  depend  on  me 
to  see  otherwise  than  I  do  see.  .  .  .  That  is 
the  only  cause  which  keeps  me  from  being  a 
priest." 

Not  celibacy,  then,  but  the  sagrifizio 
cTintelletto,  as  Cognat  truly  remarks,  was  the 
spectre  before  whose  presence  Renan  drew 
back  terrified.  V  e  must  even  go  beyond  this, 
and  assert  in  him  a  dislike  of  all  affirmations 
not  compelled  by  evidence  as  of  the  sun  at 
noonday.  The  priesthood  was  a  lifelong 
affirmation  ;  he  desired,  at  most,  only  such 
engagements  as  might  be  laid  aside  when  he 
suspected  their  hollowness ;  and  an  instructive 
parallel  opens  between  this  manner  of  binding 
oneself  to  truth  and  the  so-called  Free  Love 
which  in  George  Sand's  best-known  period 
struck  the   keynote   of  her   novels. 

But  the  same  thing  meets  us  everywhere 
in  modern  life  and  literature.  The  Zeitgeist, 
a  prisoner  of  time,  shudders  at  "  the  constant 
service  of  the  antique  world,"  whether  it 
was  loyal  to  God  or  man.  That  a  rustic  with- 
out experience,  dazzled  by  abstract  reasoning 
on    all   sides  of   him,    should    not    have    seen 


Eclipse   of  Faith  57 

the  emptiness  of  such  time-serving,  may- 
be pardonable.  His  masters,  devout  but 
little  versed  in  that  science  which  F.  von 
Schlegel  has  well  termed  the  philosophy  of 
life,  could  neither  comprehend  nor  answer 
him.  Their  apologetics  were  exhausted.  As 
for  the  splendid  and  vital  fact  of  historic 
religion,  from  which  the  divine  personality 
of  Jesus  could  be  torn  only  to  deny  Him 
in  the  end,  as  Unitarians  must  do,  Renan 
possessed  no  light  in  himself  whereby  to  discern 
its  value.  He  had  acted  and  suffered  too 
little  ;  he  had  been  dwelling  not  in  the  dark, 
but  in  shadowland,  too  long,  for  even  a  genius 
like  his  to  measure  the  reality  of  things.  And 
Henriette,  who  had  more  to  undergo,  never 
fell  into  the  mood  of  artistic  trifling  which  at 
length  absorbed  all  that  was  austere  and  fine 
in  her  brother's  character. 

This  judgment  is  not  simply  mine.  It  has 
been  uttered  by  men  as  unlike  one  another  as 
Tholuck  and  M.  Seailles,  the  latter  of  whom 
signalizes  this  period  in  Kenan's  life  as  heroic. 
To  go  on  with  our  story.  Henriette,  we  may 
surmise,  had  been  waiting  for  this  confession. 


5  8  Renan 

She  replied,  June  i,  1845,  "I  understand;  I 
sympathize."  She  had  written  to  Vienna,  and 
taken  steps  to  get  him  a  tutorship  ;  but  what- 
ever came  of  them,  she  adds,  "  when  certain 
ideas  have  been  ventilated,  they  leave  their 
trace.  You  are  moving  on  a  fresh  path." 
Her  counsel  would  be  to  give  up  St.  Sulpice, 
continue  the  study  of  Eastern  languages  under 
M.  de  Quatremere,  and  fix  himself  in  Paris. 
A  young  man  could  live  on  twelve  hundred 
francs  a  year  ;  she  will  find  them  for  Ernest, 
whose  future  is  her  chief  concern.  But  their 
mother  ?  Henriette  was  for  plain-dealing ; 
not  so  this  apprehensive  and  less  daring  spirit, 
who  could  not  face  the  tragedy  which  seemed 
imminent.  The  formidable  secret  had 
been  kept  between  them.  He  now  talked  of 
shaking  off  a  burden,  the  clerical  state,  which 
destiny  had  laid  upon  him,  and  of  sacrificing 
all  to  duty.  Could  he  not,  however,  take  his 
degree  and  prepare  for  the  Ecole  Normale  ? 
But  he  must  surely  wait  till  October  ;  he  must 
come  back  to  St.  Sulpice.  He  was  then  writ- 
ing two  days  before  the  last  vacation  which 
he  intended  to  pass  as  a  cleric  in  Brittany. 


Eclipse   of  Faith  59 


His  sister,  addressing  him  by  means  of  a 
friend,  so  as  to  escape  Madame  Renan's 
observation,  did  not  wholly  approve.  Let 
him  return  to  Paris  in  lay  attire,  take  a  lodging, 
and  have  done  with  the  Seminary.  Alain, 
who  lived  at  St.  Malo,  would  procure  what 
was  needful.  When  she  wrote  in  an  open 
letter,  "  Take  your  degree,"  such  would  be  its 
real   meaning. 

The  poor  mother  looked  on  all  this  while, 
with  distress  and  growing  perplexity.  She 
felt  that  her  boy  did  not  lay  bare  his  heart  to 
her  as  of  old.  One  day,  as  he  was  reading  by 
her  side,  she  snatched  the  book  out  of  his  hand 
with  an  exclamation,  "  Ah,  Ernest,  your  ideas 
will  make  them  fling  you  on  the  pavement !  " 
It  was  her  continual  but  hitherto  unspoken 
dread.  She  recited  instances ;  the  lot  of  a 
discarded  cleric  was,  indeed,  too  often  miser- 
able. But  they  talked  of  the  journey  over  the 
Rhine,  which  never  came  to  pass  in  the  way 
she  dreamt.  Ernest  felt  that  he  could  not 
throw  off  the  cassock.  He  was  in  extreme 
agitation,  and  Henriette,  thinking  him  irre- 
solute,   rebuked   his    want    of    courage    in    a 


6  o  Renan 

letter  dated  October  lo,  1845,  on  the  eve  of 
her  departure  for  Italy  with  the  Zamoyski. 
By  that  time  all  was  over,  and  Renan  had 
left  the  Catholic  Church. 

His  resolution  was  not  taken  until  the  clos- 
ing days  of  September.  To  his  dear  Breton 
masters  he  could  not  enter  upon  questions 
which  he  decided  by  weighing  evidence  in 
critical  scales,  and  which  they  forestalled  by 
the  authority  of  tradition.  As  little  would 
his  mother  have  believed  that  he  was  giving 
up  religion  because,  according  to  some  Ger- 
man expositors,  the  Messianic  interpretation 
of  the  Psalms  was  unfounded,  or  Gesenius 
appeared  to  him  a  better  judge  of  what  Isaiah 
meant  than  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  had  been. 
Why,  it  may  be  asked,  did  Renan  seek  no 
alternative  in  Liberal  or  Unitarian  views  ? 
At  home  he  gave  up  receiving  the  Sacraments. 
He  meditated  on  the  large  horizons  which 
Herder  especially  opened  before  his  enchanted 
gaze.  Might  he  not  be,  then,  as  Herder  was,  an 
enlightened  modern  while  remaining  a  Chris- 
tian minister  ?  During  these  two  months  he 
felt  like  a  Protestant.     But  logic  triumphed. 


ERNEST    RENAN'S    BIRTHl'LACK    AT    TRtGUlER. 


Eclipse  of  Faith  6 1 

A  secret  voice  whispered  in  his  ear,  "  You  are 
no  longer  a  Catholic ;  your  soutane  is  a 
falsehood  ;  take  it  off." 

On  the  other  hand,  he  was  no  professor  at 
Halle  or  Tubingen  ;  to  the  French  Huguenot 
Church  he  had  never  been  drawn.  And,  after 
all,  those  who  deny  the  supernatural  cannot 
be  Christians  in  any  definite  or  historical 
sense.  If  the  solitary  dreamer  was  borne  up 
by  an  ideal  which  he  named  Jesus,  that  cloud- 
phantom  did  not  resemble  the  divine  object 
of  faith.  Among  Kenan's  former  instructors 
at  Treguier  only  one  caught  a  glimpse  into 
his  mind.  "  Ah,"  he  said,  "  I  always  fancied 
they  made  you  study  too  hard."  His  custom 
of  reciting  the  Psalms  in  Hebrew  astonished 
them  ;  did  he  want  to  turn  Jew  ?  He  de- 
spatched a  long  account  of  his  ideas  to  the 
director  in  Paris  who  had  failed,  though  with 
the  best  of  intentions,  to  lead  him  out  of  the 
maze.  "  I  did  hope,"  said  he,  "  that  when  I 
had  gone  round  the  circle  of  doubt,  I  should 
come  back  to  the  point  from  which  I  started  ; 
I  have  lost  that  expectation  altogether  ;  I 
could  return  to  Catholicism  only  by  abjuring 


62  R 


enan 


my  reason."  He  had  often  been  tempted  to 
revolt  against  so  dangerous  a  guide.  But 
how  could  he  ?  The  Catholic  creed  was  a 
bar  of  iron ;  would  there  ever  be  set  up 
among  Frenchmen  a  rational,  a  critical  Chris- 
tianity ?  At  all  events,  for  him  the  priesthood 
was  out  of  the  question. 

To  all  this  his  director  had  no  reply  that 
would  avail.  Catholic  truth  was  one  thing, 
Rationalism  another.  "  Then  indeed,"  New- 
man had  written  in  1839,  "will  be  the  stern 
encounter,  when  two  real  and  living  principles, 
simple,  entire,  and  consistent,  one  in  the 
Church,  the  other  out  of  it,  at  length  rush 
upon  each  other,  contending  not  for  names 
and  words,  or  half  views,  but  for  elementary 
notions  and  distinctive  moral  characters." 
This  was  what  had  happened  to  Renan  ;  but 
never  had  a  Church  been  less  prepared  to 
meet  such  a  crisis  than  the  French  in  1845. 
Its  knowledge  of  the  situation  was  deplorably 
inadequate.  Of  Biblical  studies  it  had  no 
grasp  ;  philosophy  had  become  to  it  a  string 
of  formulas  ;  it  saw  only  in  the  dimmest 
distance    what    other   Churches    and    nations 


Eclipse   of  Faith  63 

were  doing  with  religion.  To  this  effect 
wrote  the  late  Mgr.  d'Hulst,  who  would  not 
willingly  have  darkened  the  melancholy  pic- 
ture. Certain  it  is  that  we  cannot  recall  a 
name  in  those  disastrous  years  among  French 
divines  which  united  learning  with  insight, 
or  any  one  who  could  set  forth  in  modern  and 
effective  terms  the  ancient  beliefs.  Lacor- 
daire,  for  example,  is  a  memory  of  which 
Catholics  are  proud.  But  Lacordaire  knew 
no  German  ;  neither  would  his  impassioned 
rhetoric  make  up  for  the  want  of  exegesis, 
the  limited  acquaintance  with  history,  primi- 
tive or  Eastern,  the  defective  psychology,  all 
of  which  at  that  time  bore  hard  upon  ecclesias- 
tical training.     And  who  else  was  there  ? 

Ernest  bade  his  mother  farewell ;  called  in 
St.  Malo  for  Henriette's  last  letters ;  and,  still 
wearing  his  cassock,  arrived  at  St.  Sulpice  on 
October  6,  1845.  He  found  that  the  critical 
moment  was  at  hand.  Mgr.  Affre  contem- 
plated setting  up  immediately  a  house  of 
studies  in  which  Renan  should  be  one  of  the 
professors.  The  young  man  was  told  to  call 
upon  his  Archbishop  the  same  day  and  give 


64  Ren  an 

him  a  reply.  A  few  hours  later  the  prelate 
came  to  St.  Sulpice,  and  sent  for  him.  Renan 
consulted  his  friends.  By  their  advice  he 
declined  the  interview.  But  his  superiors  knew 
that  he  did  not  mean  to  stay  at  the  Seminary ; 
and  as  evening  fell,  he  went  down  the  steps  for 
the  last  time  in  his  cassock,  crossed  the  square 
rapidly,  and  made  his  way  to  the  neighbouring 
hotel,  or  lodging  house,  of  Mile.  Celeste.  The 
change  to  lay  attire  was  not  at  once  completed. 
But  in  this  abrupt  fashion  the  unknown  had 
been  faced  and  Renan  had  flung  himself  upon 
the  pavement  of  Paris. 

Three  days  afterwards,  as  we  have  set  down 
elsewhere,  Newman  submitted  to  the  Catholic 
Church  at  Littlemore.  His  reason  had  con- 
vinced him  that  faith  is  indispensable  ;  that 
Revelation  is  a  fact ;  that  of  alternatives  one 
must  be  chosen ;  and  that  Church,  Bible, 
religion  stand  or  fall  together.  He  embraced 
a  consistent  scheme  of  life,  which  had  survived 
long  ages.  Renan,  taking  the  other  path, 
went  into  the  wilderness,  whither  we  must 
now  follow  him. 


Chapter  III 

THE  SCHOLAR  IN  PARIS 

BEFORE  setting  out  on  her  own  journey, 
Henriette  had  forwarded  to  Mile. 
Ulliac  in  Paris  a  bill  of  fifteen  hun- 
dred francs  for  Ernest's  use,  payable  Novem- 
ber 10  at  Messrs.  Rothschild's.  He  was  not, 
therefore,  destitute.  He  could  always  fall 
back  on  this  little  store,  although  he  seems 
never  to  have  taken  from  it.  The  Sulpicians, 
too,  behaved  with  a  kindness  which  almost 
overcame  him,  surprising  as  it  was,  he  thought, 
in  men  so  orthodox  towards  a  fugitive  from 
their  house.  They  procured  an  honourable 
post  for  him  in  the  College  Stanislas,  the  head 
of  which,  M.  Gratry,  was  eminent  in  literature 
and  mathematics.  Dupanloup  advised  him 
not  to  refuse  it,  adding,  "  My  poor  purse  is  at 
your  service  ;  I  wish  I  could  offer  you  some- 
thing   more    valuable."     The    assistance    was 

86  C 


6  6  Renan 

declined  with  no  less  good  feeling  than  that 
which  had  prompted  it.  Renan,  bent  on 
sparing  his  mother,  made  trial  of  M.  Gratry 
and  the  College  Stanislas. 

He  found  the  rector  fascinating  but 
chimerical,  wholly  unversed  in  his  own 
branches  of  knowledge.  Their  conversations 
were  a  perpetual  misunderstanding  on  the 
part  of  Gratry.  But  this  arrangement  could 
not  last.  Renan  was  expected  to  appear, 
like  the  other  masters,  in  soutane.  That 
he  would  not  do ;  on  All  Souls'  Day 
he  left  the  college,  and  took  up  his  abode 
in  the  Quartier  St.  Jacques  as  a  private 
tutor  without  salary.  He  was  lodged  and 
boarded  ;  he  had  his  own  room  ;  two  hours 
a  day  with  seven  pupils  paid  for  this  not 
disagreeable  entertainment ;  and  he  would 
have  felt  happy,  but  that  Madame  Renan  was 
in  great  trouble  about  him,  while  the  strange, 
cold  atmosphere  chilled  him  after  so  long  a 
seclusion.  His  poor  mother  sang  in  her  Breton 
solitude  of  her  Joseph  whom  wild  beasts  had 
devoured  ;  his  reticence  had  been  a  trial ;  but 
he  could  not  yet  bring  himself  to  be  open  with 


The  Scholar   in   Paris        67 


her.  Their  correspondence  during  the  next 
months  is  painful  reading.  At  last,  in  March 
1846,  Henriette,  who  detested  concealments, 
explained  his  conduct  in  a  letter  which  sums 
up  the  story. 

By  this  time  Ernest  had  taken  his  bachelor's 
degree,  not  without  some  official  embarrass- 
ment, due  to  the  place  where  he  had  been 
trained.  For  St.  Sulpice  was  not  a  Govern- 
ment school.  M.  Jullien,  the  Chinese  scholar, 
was  of  use  to  him  ;  others  had  remarked  his 
quickness  to  learn.  At  twenty-three  seldom 
had  a  young  provincial  won  so  much  notice. 
Henriette,  after  dwelling  on  all  this,  foretells 
that  he  will  be  distinguished  and  superior  in 
whatever  calling  he  follows.  She  was  writing 
from  Rome.  In  1846  the  Polish  peasantry 
broke  out  against  the  nobles,  who  had  treated 
them  from  of  old  like  serfs.  Count  Zamoyski, 
as  it  appears,  was  forewarned,  and  thought 
well  to  start  on  a  long  holiday  in  Southern 
Europe.  Some  of  the  nobles  were  murdered 
shortly  after  at  Zamosk.  And  there  was  hope 
that  Henriette  might  return  to  her  people  in 
France — a  hope  deferred,  however,  until  Sep- 


6  8  Renan 

tember  1850,  when  Ernest  met  her  in  Berlin 
and  took  her  home  to  Paris. 

Ten  years  of  exile  had  given  her  the 
looks  of  middle  age,  though  she  was  but 
eight  and  thirty.  "  Of  the  charm,"  says 
her  brother,  "  which  had  been  hers  when 
bidding  me  farewell  in  the  parlour  of  St. 
Nicolas,  nothing  remained  but  a  delightful 
expression,  the  token  of  unspeakable  kind- 
ness." She  had  lived  long  enough  in 
Rome  to  feel  its  attraction.  Her  creed  was 
a  pure  Theism ;  and  though  she  did  not 
permanently  influence  her  brother's  opinions, 
while  she  lived  the  serious  note  which 
we  miss  from  his  later  writings  was,  on  the 
whole,  dominant. 

To  the  correspondence  with  Henriette  suc- 
ceeds, before  long,  an  almost  equally  interest- 
ing exchange  of  thought  between  Ernest  and 
a  new  friend,  Marcellin  Berthelot.  From 
November  1845  they  were  next-door  neigh- 
bours in  the  "  obscure  lodging-house  "  of  the 
Rue  des  Deux  Eglises,  where  Renan  passed 
three  years  and  a  half,  teaching  without  salary. 
In    power    and    accomplishments    the    young 


The  Scholar   in   Paris        69 

men  were,  perhaps,  on  a  level ;  in  temper  they 
differed  widely.  After  so  fierce  a  struggle 
with  his  Elohim — to  speak  Hebraically — the 
recalcitrant  Levite  could  still  remind  his 
former  associate  Cognat,  that  "  We  are  happy 
in  defiance  of  logic,"  M.  Carbon  had  perceived 
that  the  silent  and  seemingly  morose  Breton 
was  by  nature  of  a  gay  disposition,  though  he 
could  be  resigned  to  the  inevitable.  He  was 
resolute  and  sanguine  ;  but  little  given  to  "  par- 
ticular friendships,"  as  the  monastic  phrase 
went,  chiefly  because  he  found  occupation  in 
his  own  thoughts,  which  he  deemed  equal  to 
other  men's  actions ;  nor  would  he  swerve, 
when  he  had  once  made  up  his  mind,  to  please 
anybody. 

Berthelot,  four  years  his  junior  (born  in 
1827)  is  a  more  attaching  figure.  His  mother 
was  of  Paris ;  his  father,  the  son  of  a  peasant 
on  the  banks  of  the  Loire,  had  taken  a  degree 
in  medicine  and  practised  in  a  poverty-stricken 
neighbourhood,  close  to  St.  Jacques  la  Bou- 
chcrie.  Too  tender-hearted  for  ambition, 
the  doctor  was  always  poor,  and,  says  Mar- 
cellin,  "  from  the  age  of  ten  years  I  have  been 


7  o  Renan 

troubled  by  the  uncertainty  of  the  future." 
In  his  friendships,  according  to  Henriette, 
who  knew  and  valued  him,  there  appeared  all 
the  sensitive  delicacy  of  a  woman.  The 
father,  Gallican  in  his  religious  principles, 
astonished  Renan  by  his  republican  sentiments, 
which  were  a  new  experience  for  the  Breton, 
himself  willing  to  live  under  any  Government, 
if  it  would  only  last.  Marcellin,  who  shared 
these  advanced  views,  cared  nothing  about 
antiquity,  laid  out  a  path  for  himself  in  science, 
and,  thanks  to  his  father's  generous  help, 
lived  in  a  world  of  disinterested  research  until 
he  was  thirty.  As  a  mere  lad  he  counted 
among  the  most  brilliant  pupils  of  the  College 
Henri  IV  ;  and  in  1846  he  won  the  highest 
prize  in  philosophy,  though  scarcely  nineteen. 
Already  a  Free-thinker,  he  was  drawn  to- 
wards Renan  by  a  certain  likeness  in  their  for- 
tunes, by  his  "  mild  and  serious  expression,"  and 
by  the  energy  which  he  threw  into  his  daily 
work,  often  prolonged  into  the  small  hours  of 
the  morning.  They  were  both  determined  not 
to  mortgage  their  freedom,  as  too  many  have 
done  in  France,  by  entering  on  the  career  of 


The  Scholar   171   Paris 


7 


administration.  Young,  ignorant  of  life,  eager 
to  know  whatever  could  be  known,  they  met 
only  to  discuss  the  great  problems.  Berthelot 
initiated  his  friend  into  the  secrets  of  chemis- 
try, and  enlarged  on  the  prospect  of  a  new 
social  order.  Renan  persuaded  Marcellin  to 
buy  a  Hebrew  Testament,  the  leaves  of  which 
he  did  not  cut,  and  expounded  theology  to 
him  from  the  critic's  point  of  sight.  "  A  few 
months  were  enough,"  says  the  unfrocked 
cleric,  "  to  relegate  the  vestiges  of  the  faith 
among  our  memories."  Very  soon  they  could 
not  have  told  which  were  their  several  parts  in 
the  ideas  that  came  to  them. 

But  Renan  had  begun  to  write.  Victor 
Cousin,  whose  great  fame  was  over,  but  whose 
intellectual  curiosity  never  slackened,  and 
Victor  Le  Clerc,  the  historian,  encouraged  him 
to  make  good  use  of  his  Eastern  lore.  Under 
such  auspices,  he  gained  an  entrance  to  the 
world  of  letters  and  libraries.  In  1847  he 
completed  his  degrees  at  the  University. 
That  same  year  he  presented  to  the  Academy 
of  Inscriptions  his  General  History  of  the 
Semitic  Languages.     It  is  a  bold  and  specula- 


7  2  Renan 

tive  work,  original  in  method,  and  it  won  the 
Volney  prize.  Wc  feci  in  reading  it  that  the 
author  will  never  consent  to  be  a  mere  savant ; 
he  throws  out  conjectures,  lays  open  the  soul 
of  Arab  and  Aryan,  and  explains  religion  by 
race,  landscape,  and  psychology. 

On  February  24,  1848,  the  street  riots 
broke  out  before  which  Louis  Philippe  ran 
to  England,  leaving  the  Tuilerics  in  the  hands 
of  a  mob.  Whoever  wishes  to  see  that 
shameful  page  of  history  as  it  was  enacted, 
let  him  study  A  Sentimental  Education, 
by  Gustave  Flaubert.  Renan,  at  that  time, 
was  attending  the  lessons  on  Sanscrit  of 
Burnouf,  at  the  College  de  France.  On  the 
25th  he  found  the  lecture-hall  transformed  to 
a  guard-room.  For  one  moment  he,  too,  was 
tempted  by  the  fever  of  the  barricades.  But 
he  said  to  himself,  "  Science  is  a  religion  ;  it 
never  loses  its  value,"  and  making  his  way 
along  the  armed  streets,  he  went  to  Burnouf's 
private  residence,  where  the  Sanscrit  lesson 
was  resumed.  Then  came  the  "  Days  of 
June,"  during  which  the  working  men  of  Paris 
fought    the  middle  class  and  were    defeated 


The  Scholar   i7i   Paris        73 

with  frightful  slaughter.  To  his  friend  Ber- 
thelot  Renan  writes  on  the  26th  that  it  was 
worse  than  the  St.  Bartholomew ;  that  he 
would  himself  have  been  prepared  to  join  the 
National  Guard  in  putting  down  anarchy,  but 
the  Guard  had  become  an  executioner  ;  and 
that,  guilty  as  were  "  these  poor  maniacs," 
more  guilty  still  were  the  men  who  had  made 
of  them  helots  and  brutes. 

A  few  days  later  he  visited  the  battlefield — 
St.  Antoine,  the  Rue  St.  Jacques,  which  goes 
from  the  Pantheon  to  the  Quais,  the  Place 
of  the  Bastille.  His  account,  uncommonly 
picturesque  for  Renan,  is  worth  quoting. 
''  The  barricades,"  he  says,  "  were  like  regular 
fortresses,  with  salient  angles,  one  succeeding 
another  at  every  fifty  yards.  The  square  of 
the  Bastille  offered  a  dreadful  scene  of  chaos. 
All  the  trees  were  cut  down  or  shattered  by 
bullets  ;  houses  pulled  to  the  ground  or  still 
in  flames ;  actual  towers  built  up  with  scaffold 
poles,  vehicles  overturned,  paving-stones  piled 
in  heaps.  In  the  midst  of  all  that,  the  people 
stupefied,  hardly  knowing  what  they  were 
about    in    such    unimaginable    circumstances ; 


7  4  Renan 

soldiers  asleep  on  the  flags,  almost  under  the 
feet  of  passers-by  ;  the  rage  of  the  conquered 
showing  itself  under  apparently  quiet  looks ; 
the  disorder  of  the  conquerors  as  they  cleared 
their  way  across  the  barricades  overthrown  ; 
and  elsewhere  the  compassion  of  the  public 
who  were  asking  charity  for  the  wounded  and 
linen  to  dress  their  wounds  ...  it  was  a 
sight  of  sublime  originality,  naked  man  face 
to  face  with  his  fellow,  nothing  left  but  his 
primitive  instincts." 

But  the  spectacle  gave  him  a  shock.  He 
had  seen  it  too  close  at  hand.  He  could  not 
love  these  new  Barbarians.  How  shall  they 
cease  to  be  proletarians,  nay,  bourgeoisie  ?  In 
what  way  can  the  "  people  "  be  civilized,  lest 
they  destroy  all  things  of  price  like  Franks  or 
Vandals  ?  These  questions  haunted  Renan 
during  the  seven  months  from  November  1848 
until  June  of  the  year  following,  which  he 
spent  on  a  large  and  somewhat  ungainly 
volume,  'TIhe  Future  of  Science.  It  unfolds  a 
Utopian  programme  ;  but  all  he  ever  knew  or 
dreamt  may  be  traced  across  its  pages,  rudely 
sketched,  exuberant,  or  inchoate,  wanting  the 


The  Scholar   in   Paris        75 

touch  of  his  mature  style,  for  he  was  not  yet 
an  artist.  He  felt  convinced  that  scientific 
research,  not  abstract  speculation,  would  dis- 
cover how  mankind  had  originated.  But  if  so, 
it  must  not  pause  until  it  dealt  with  history, 
philology,  myth,  and  legend,  the  primitive, 
spontaneous  man  who  had  created  our  govern- 
ing ideas.  This  brings  him  to  the  Christian 
origins,  on  which  "  the  most  important  book 
of  the  nineteenth  century  "  is  waiting  to  be 
written.  Nay,  he  will  write  it  himself,  unless 
death  or  some  other  fatality  interposes. 

This  pregnant  volume  remained  in  manu- 
script until  1890.  Kenan's  best  friends  did 
not  advise  publication  ;  and  further  experience 
led  him  to  acquiesce  in  their  counsel.  The 
Republic  had  no  need  of  critics.  But,  on  the 
motion  of  M.  Le  Clerc,  he  was  sent  by  the 
Academy  of  Inscriptions  to  Italy  in  November 
1849. 

The  French  had  driven  Garibaldi  out  of 
Rome  ;  and  their  soldiers  were  holding  the  city, 
while  Pius  IX  was  still  at  Gaeta.  This  expe- 
dition, of  which  Renan  became  a  member,  had 
for  its  object  antiquarian  research.     He  ac- 


7  6  Renan 

cepted  the  mission  with  joy.  "  It  will  be  an 
epoch  in  my  life,"  he  wrote  to  Berthelot,  "  as 
an  artist  and  a  man."  Such,  indeed,  it  turned 
out  to  be.  On  November  9  he  arrived  in  the 
Eternal  City.  He  came  back  by  Turin  at  the 
close  of  May  1850.  Six  months  of  a  pilgrim- 
age in  search  of  the  beautiful  formed  a  second 
or  third  stage  of  his  intellectual  training,  which 
his  correspondence,  in  those  years  not  scanty, 
describes  with  ever-growing  enthusiasm. 

Rome  enchanted  him.  His  prejudices  melted 
away  before  the  marvellous  apparition  ;  he  was 
conquered  by  the  Madonna,  whose  picture  he 
saw  at  every  street-corner,  adorned  with  lights 
and  flowers.  His  very  religion  rose  from  the 
dead,  a  shadowy  but  subduing  phantom.  He 
had  never  grasped  what  a  popular  faith  really 
is  in  a  nation  that  knows  no  other.  Faith  and 
civilization — not  in  the  base  mechanical  sense — 
attained  in  Rome  to  "  an  incomparable  poetry, 
height,  idealism."  In  the  French  tempera- 
ment to  cultivate  ideals  was  to  invent  formulas  ; 
here  it  meant  the  plastic  arts,  and  life  itself 
was  religion.  The  atmosphere  had  something 
antique ;     comfort    did    not    exist,    but    who 


The  Scholar^   in   Paris        77 

minded  its  absence  ?  Paris  was  profane,  Rome 
everlastingly  sacred.  The  Revolution,  as 
understood  in  France,  would  never  take  root 
south  of  the  Alps.  It  was  a  Jacobin  idea  that 
the  Catholic  Church  must  be  annihilated  ;  but 
for  Italians  to  be  orthodox  was  everything  ; 
they  would  defend  their  superstitions  to  the 
death.  As  for  the  French  army  of  occupation, 
Voltairian  or  democratic,  the  people  detested 
its  ways,  and  only  the  middle  class,  a  small 
minority,  was  in  league  with  it. 

These  observations  teach  us  that  Renan  had 
good  eyes  under  his  heavy  eyelids.  We  may 
compare  some  other  of  his  pages,  denouncing 
the  clerical  government,  with  Lamennais' 
A  f  aires  de  Rome,  in  the  spirit  of  which  they  are 
cast.  But  that  which  he  gained  for  his  own 
benefit  was  a  revelation  of  the  old  classic  exist- 
ence, untroubled  by  industry,  spending  its  hours 
in  the  Forum,  everywhere  surrounded  by 
creations  of  an  art  which  ministered  far  more  to 
public  life  than  to  private  luxury.  From  these 
days  we  may  reckon  his  attachment  to  the 
world  of  which  printed  classics  had  but  shown 
him  the  least  remarkable  aspect.     More  and 


7  8  Renan 

more  his  vision  turned  towards  the  past,  beyond 
what  he  afterwards  called  the  "  frightful  ad- 
venture of  the  Middle  Ages,"  to  a  seemingly 
nobler  antiquity.  When  he  went  down  to 
Naples,  the  landscape  gave  him  a  setting  for  his 
future  treatment  of  the  Apocalypse  ;  but  he 
was  disgusted  with  so  gross  a  population  and  its 
villainous  taste.  The  ruins  of  Pcestum,  famed 
for  its  temples  and  its  roses  in  the  time  of 
Virgil,  filled  him  with  melancholy.  One  civi- 
lization had  perished  thus ;  what  would  be  the 
fate  of  our  own  ? 

He  wrote  again  from  Monte  Cassino,  in 
January  1850.  The  Benedictines  were  Italian 
patriots,  who  vied  in  enthusiasm  with  Gioberti, 
Rosmini,  Ventura, — priests  and  leaders  at  that 
time  celebrated.  But  Padre  Tosti,  not  long 
since  the  counsellor  of  Pius  IX,  was  in  a  sort  of 
exile  at  Rome  ;  the  monks  trembled  for  their 
abbey ;  meanwhile  they  discussed  German 
thought  and  French  revolutions.  In  one  of 
their  cells  Renan  found  the  Lehen  Jesu  of 
Strauss.  He  admired  their  zeal ;  he  smiled  at 
their  Guelfic  dreams.  The  salvation  of  Italy,  he 
declares,  will  come  from  its  monks ;    but  they 


The  Scholar  ifi   Paris        79 

must  not  think  of  imitating  his  own  country- 
men. He  saw  Tosti  later,  but  did  not  forebode 
the  long  martyrdom  of  that  brave  spirit,  which 
ended  only  with  his  life  not  many  years  ago. 
Returning  to  Rome  after  a  hasty  survey  of 
Florence,  and  a  day  never  to  be  forgotteix  -^t 
lovely  Pisa,  the  French  traveller,  who  had  been 
received  in  audience  with  his  companions  by 
Pius  IX,  awaited  the  Pontiff's  entrance  with 
curiosity.  He  conjectured  that  his  welcome 
would  be  a  cold  one,  and  merely  official.  But, 
on  April  12,  1850,  he  was  present  in  the  square 
of  St.  John  Lateran  when  Pius  arrived  from  the 
South  ;  and  he  beheld  a  scene  of  frantic  rejoic- 
ing all  round  him,  with  cries  as  violent  as  they 
were  momently  sincere.  We  may  be  permitted 
to  add  a  sequel.  Twenty  years  later,  on  Sep- 
tember 19,  1870,  the  present  writer  happened 
to  witness  from  the  Scala  Santa  Pius  IX  driving 
into  the  same  square  for  the  last  time.  He  had 
come  to  ascend  the  sacred  steps  and  to  bless  his 
little  army,  a  detachment  of  which  was  holding 
the  Gate  of  St.  John  against  the  Italian  troops. 
But  now  there  was  no  wild  shouting,  and  the 
Pope  in  red  mantle  looked  deadly  pale  as  he 


8  o  Renan 

raised  his  hand  in  benediction.  Next  morning 
Rome  was  taken  ;  Pius  IX  became  a  prisoner 
in  the  Vatican,  which  he  never  afterwards 
quitted.  Renan  observes  that  the  population, 
whose  transports  were  so  indescribable  on  a  day 
of  triumph,  would  have  insulted  their  sovereign 
had  he  been  mounting  the  scaffold.  In  good 
and  bad  the  Romans  were  extreme. 

He  travelled  into  Umbria,  where  he  praised 
Assisi  beyond  all  for  its  beauty  and  pathos, 
calling  St.  Francis  "  the  Christ  of  the  Middle 
Age."  Towards  the  end  of  May  1850  he 
arrived  in  Venice.  Venice,  he  remarks  with 
profound  truth,  is  the  lagoon,  not  the  terra 
ferma.  He  admired  it  as  a  lovely  flower  which 
could  not  live  in  the  modern  air  ;  but,  again, 
he  thought  it  more  Byzantine  than  classic,  and 
the  time  came  when  he  stigmatized  the  Place 
of  St.  Mark  as  something  barbarous.  The 
Venetian  people,  by  origin  Gauls,  were  mixed 
with  Slavs  and  Hungarians ;  he  could  not 
admire  them  as  he  did  the  "  Athenians  of 
Florence."  However,  in  this  part  of  his  jour- 
ney Renan  discovered  materials  at  Padua  for 
the  book  which  he  was  meditating  on  the  great 


The  Scholar   in   Paris        8  i 

Spanish  philosopher,  Averroes,  from  whom  that 
university  derived  much  of  its  debased  doctrine. 
At  Milan  the  Emperor  Napoleon  and  the 
Kingdom  of  Italy  reigned  still.  A  glance  at 
Turin  sufficed  ;  and  we  find  him  once  more  in 
Paris,  to  which,  as  he  told  his  mother  in  1845,  he 
clung  for  dear  life. 

In  September,  as  already  noted,  he  met  his 
sister  at  Berlin,  and  brought  her  to  the  small 
apartment,  in  a  garden  overlooking  the  Car- 
melites, near  the  Val  de  Grace,  where  they 
lived  six  years.  Henriette  kept  house  for  him 
with  a  Frenchwoman's  graceful  economy  ;  she 
shared  his  studies  and  copied  his  manuscripts 
for  the  press.  But  she  did  more.  By  her  se- 
vere and  penetrating  criticism  she  compelled  him 
to  lay  aside  whatever  was  hard  or  excessive  in 
his  first  manner,  to  check  his  fondness  for  the 
satirical,  and  to  be  content  with  a  simple,  un- 
alloyed French,  akin  to  that  of  Port  Royal, 
which  had  become  her  own  standard.  By  this 
description  we  are  led  to  think  of  Pascal ;  but 
Ernest  Renan,  though  he  writes  as  pure  a  lan- 
guage, did  not  compass  the  brief  sententious 
style  of  the  Pensees  ;  he  was  always  a  little  too 

6 


8  2  Renan 

malicious  even  for  the  Lettres  Provinciates. 
"  I  had  never  suffered,"  he  says,  "  and  I  found 
in  the  discreet  smile,  provoked  by  man's  weak- 
ness or  vanity,  a  certain  wisdom."  He  pre- 
tends that  he  gave  up  the  ironical  habit ;  let 
the  reader  of  his  last  writings  and  speeches 
agree,  if  he  can. 

Together  they  went  into  questions  of  French 
art  and  architecture.  They  visited  Rouen, 
Rheims,  and  the  country  between,  where  the 
pointed  style  had  attained  its  perfection. 
Henriette  was  happy,  but  she  thought  Ernest 
should  be  so  too,  and  she  advised  him  to  marry, 
not  without  secret  misgivings.  He  was  familiar 
with  a  Dutch  artist  of  repute,  Ary  Scheffer,  and 
from  that  intimacy,  says  Berthelot,  had  derived 
new  lights  which  added  to  his  literary  powers. 
M.  Scheffer's  niece,  Cornelie,  was  highly  accom- 
plished, in  every  way  the  wife  that  Renan 
would  have  chosen.  But  now  his  sister's 
jealous  affection  led  to  an  agitating  episode,  and 
some  bitter  days  intervened.  Ernest  told 
Mile.  Cornelie  that  he  would  not  marry  unless 
Henriette  were  satisfied.  The  same  evening  he 
let  his  sister  know  what  he  had  done.     It  was 


The  Scholar   in   Paris        83 

enough.  She  ran  next  morning  to  M.  Schef- 
fer's,  gave  her  full  consent,  and  all  turned  out 
for  the  best.  It  was  on  her  savings  that  the 
household  depended.  Renan  was  married  in 
St.  Germain  des  Pres  on  September  11,  1856  ; 
and  the  two  ladies,  though  in  different  ways, 
lived  happy  ever  after. 

Versatile  and  indefatigable,  the  man  himself, 
who  loved  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  was  yet 
a  minor  in  business.  "  I  will  write  books,"  he 
had  said  as  a  child.  But  he  did  not  fancy  that 
they  would  secure  him  a  livelihood.  What  was 
his  astonishment  when,  one  day,  M.  Michel 
Levy  came  upstairs  to  his  garret,  praised  certain 
of  his  articles  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
and  elsewhere,  and  offered  terms  for  a  collected 
issue !  He  tells  the  story  with  a  point  of 
humour  ;  gladly  the  bargain  was  made,  and 
thirty  volumes  followed  in  succession  down  to 
1887.  Eleven  others,  marked  posthumous, 
complete  the  record.  Besides  this  great  library, 
which  commands  a  general  interest,  we  should 
take  into  account  Kenan's  lectures  in  Hebrew, 
his  share  in  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions,  and 
the  volumes  which  he  brought  out  jointly  witli 


84  Renan 

Victor  Le  Clerc  on  France  in  the  fourteenth 
century. 

A  robust  constitution  served  him  well.  His 
appearance,  we  are  told,  was  wanting  in  dis- 
tinction. He  made  no  effort  to  shine  at  social 
gatherings,  though  he  could  talk  supremely  well 
among  the  elect.  He  cared  little  for  money 
and  shunned  advertisement.  Scarcely  did  he 
affect  to  be  a  man  of  letters.  The  circum- 
stances which  were  to  transform  a  secluded 
Oriental  student  into  the  most  popular  anti- 
Christian  of  his  time  lay  yet  in  the  future. 
Tempted  by  every  branch  of  learning,  from 
Sanscrit,  which  he  took  up  with  Burnouf,  to 
Chinese  and  the  Greek  of  the  Middle  Age,  he 
ran  a  risk, — it  may  be  said  that  he  did  not 
escape  it, — which  all  dilettanti  must  encounter, 
of  losing  himself  among  bypaths.  Averroes, 
which  was  published  in  1852,  proved  almost  a 
dull  book  ;  but  it  was  meant  for  those  who  read 
to  be  instructed,  not  to  be  passively  entertained. 
By  it  he  won  his  degree  as  Doctor  of  Letters. 
The  History  of  the  Semitic  Languages  opened  a 
fruitful  contrast  between  the  genius  of  Israel 
or  Ishmael  and  the  Aryan  capacity  for  abstract 


The  Scholar  in   Paris        85 

reasoning.  It  was  the  scholar's  prelude  to 
undertakings  more  literary  on  the  same  great 
subject.  First  in  the  collected  Studies  of  Re- 
ligious History  of  1857,  he  approached  the  work 
which  was  to  make  him  famous,  and  startled 
the  orthodox  into  a  suspicion  that  some  new 
enemy,  a  Celsus  or  even  a  Voltaire,  was  enter- 
ing the  field. 

On  the  history  of  Israel,  on  the  Critical 
Historians  of  Jesus,  on  the  Imitation  and  the 
Bollandist  Lives  of  the  Saints  he  expressed  his 
views  with  a  freedom  which  gave  no  small 
offence.  Towards  F.  D.  Strauss  he  took  up  an 
attitude  which  seemed  equivocal ;  but  in  de- 
clining to  be  a  mythologist  Renan  made  light 
of  the  Gospel  facts.  A  charming  fable  had  no 
need  of  testimony.  Did  we  care  whether  the 
Uiad  was  founded  on  a  veracious  chronicle  ? 
The  picture  of  a  sublime  character  gains  no- 
thing, he  said,  by  its  resemblance  to  an  actual 
hero. 

Jean  Jacques  had  thought  otherwise.  "  My 
friend,  it  is  not  so  that  we  invent,"  he 
tells  us  in  the  well  known  passage,  "  it  would 
be  more  inconceivable  that  a  number  of  men 


8  6  Renan 

had  combined  to  fashion  the  Gospel  than  that 
one  man  had  furnished  its  subject."  Renan 
professed,  in  his  correspondence  at  the  semin- 
ary, to  be  relying  altogether  on  historical  mo- 
tives. He  had  even  written  to  Berthelot  from 
Venice,  "  History  is  to  me  what  reason  is  to 
you."  But  facts  were  now  to  him  of  no  conse- 
quence, provided  we  could  save  the  ideal  in  our 
imagination.  Whether  events  have  justified 
him,  many  of  his  desponding  pages  at  an  after 
period  will  show.  His  judgment  of  Feuerbach 
is  curiously  applicable  to  himself.  "  When  he 
resolves  to  be  an  atheist,  he  is  one  devoutly 
and  with  a  kind  of  unction."  That  sentence, 
which  reminds  us  of  Montaigne,  might  be 
printed  as  a  running  epigraph  on  every  one  of 
the  forty  volumes  which  amused,  or  fascinated, 
or  shocked  the  innumerable  readers  of  a 
romantic  who  protested  against  Romanticism, 
an  idealist  who  strove  in  vain  to  be  common- 
place, an  archangel  ruined  who  could  not  forget 
the  Heaven  whence  he  had  cast  himself  down. 
To  adverse  comments  he  made  no  direct 
answer,  but  a  subsequent  volume.  Essays  in 
Morals  and  Criticism^  which  appeared  in  1859, 


The  Scholar  i7i   Paris        87 

began  with  a  preface  which  was  marked  by  all 
his  inimitable  qualities  and  held  out  a  challenge 
to  dogmatic  Christians  not  likely  to  be  for- 
gotten. He  was  sorry  to  give  them  scandal, 
but  he  believed  in  duty,  which  was  not  the  art 
of  being  happy,  and  he  quoted  Kant.  Then  he 
enlarged  upon  the  religion  of  the  heart,  dis- 
engaged from  symbols,  and  expressed  his  de- 
light in  meeting  with  assailants  whose  faith 
appeared  to  be  so  lively.  Religion  might  be 
permitted  to  indulge  in  some  narrow  ideas  and 
an  indifferent  style  ;  for  himself  he  was  a  critic 
and  he  could  pardon  the  Church  when  it  said 
uncivil  things  of  him.  Renan  proceeded  to  ex- 
plain that  in  1851  he  had  taken  the  French 
Revolution  to  be  liberal  in  principle,  but  he 
could  do  so  no  longer.  Its  violence,  its  atomic 
conception  of  man  and  society,  its  lowering  of 
culture,  its  destruction  of  initiative,  had  brought 
in  the  reign  of  mediocrity.  There  was  need  to 
reform  1789.  He  might  be  a  pessimist ;  he 
acknowledged  that  his  mood  was  not  sanguine  ; 
for  he  could  not  believe  that  industry  and  the 
fine  arts  would  flourish  together,  and  the  Great 
Exhibition  gave  him  no  comfort. 


8  8  Ren  mi 

At  last  he  rook  refuge  in  the  poetry  of  the 
Celtic  races — there  was  his  ideal  country,  he 
cried  in  a  lyric  outburst.  "  O  sires  of  the  lowly 
tribe  at  whose  hearth  I  learned  to  believe  in 
the  unseen, — humble  clan  of  peasants  and 
mariners,  to  whom  I  owe  it  that  I  have  kept 
the  vigour  of  my  spirit  in  a  dead  land,  in  an 
age  without  hope,  ye  doubtless  have  roamed 
over  those  enchanted  seas  where  our  father 
Brandan  sought  the  Land  of  Promise.  .  .  . 
Sometimes  I  regret  that  your  bark,  leaving 
Ireland  or  Cambria,  did  not  run  before  other 
breezes.  In  my  dreams  I  see  those  peaceful 
cities  of  Clonfert  and  Lismore,  where  I  ought 
to  have  passed  my  days, — poor  Ireland  ! — 
borne  up  on  the  sound  of  thy  bells,  on  the  story 
of  thy  mysterious  wanderings.  .  .  .  Let  us 
find  comfort  in  our  fancies,  our  nobleness,  our 
disdain.  Who  can  tell  whether  our  dreams 
may  not  be  more  true  than  reality  ?  God  is 
my  witness,  ye  ancient  sires,  that  my  only  joy 
is  to  imagine,  as  I  sometimes  do,  that  I  am 
your  very  conscience,  and  that  by  me  ye  come 
to  have  a  life  and  a  voice  !  " 

The  eighty  pages  on  Celtic  bards  and  legends 


The  Scholar  in   Paris        89 

to  which  these  words  invite  us,  have  never  been 
surpassed  in  their  faint  elusive  colours,  their 
romance  of  history,  their  pleading  tone.  They 
found  an  echo  with  Matthew  Arnold,  whose 
eyes,  we  may  conjecture,  were  opened  by  them 
to  fresh  and  untrodden  vistas ;  half  a  century 
ago  they  pointed  to  the  Gaelic  revival,  with 
its  poetry  of  resistance,  its  disdain  for  the 
vulgar  modern  spirit.  As  Augustin  Thierry 
well  observed,  the  prophetic  fame  of  Cambria 
during  the  Middle  Ages  was  won  by  the 
refusal  of  its  bards  to  despair  of  their  own 
future.  The  Celt  may  suffer  defeat ;  he  is 
never  vanquished.  Arthur  will  come  again. 
*'  Almost  every  strong  appeal  to  the  super- 
natural," concludes  Renan,  "  has  been  due  to 
the  nations  that  hope  against  hope."  He 
cites  the  greatest,  Israel.  But  his  argument 
bears  a  deeper  application,  for  it  implies  that 
religion  is  not  of  this  world. 

After  the  idealist  comes  the  critic.  Much  as 
he  owed  to  Victor  Cousin,  he  made  bold  in  the 
most  flattering  way  imaginable  to  draw  that 
celebrated  man  from  a  superior  point  of  view. 
Cousin  was  the  sparkling  French  professor,  true 


90  Renan 

descendant  of  Gorgias  or  Protagoras,  bred  up  by 
the  University  in  all  the  arts  which  could  be 
displayed  on  a  theatre.     His  world  was  Paris ; 
and  though  he  had  once  crossed  the  Rhine, 
luckily  what  he  brought  back  of  Hegel  and 
Kant  would  never  damage  his  exquisite  style. 
To  old  ideas  he  gave  new  expression.     Good 
French  is  so  difficult  that  it  tempts  one  to  say 
a   great   deal   more   than   one   thinks.     True, 
there  is  no  need,  if  a  man  be  skilful,  to  offer  it 
violence.     But,  then,  a  lecturer  must  be  elo- 
quent   and    "  theory    in    France    springs    up 
armed " ;     among    Germans    it   is    otherwise. 
Philosophy    does   not    look   to  consequences ; 
but  with  a  crowd  some  diplomatic    handling 
may    be    required.     M.    Cousin     had    shown 
himself   a   real   tactician   of    the    idea.      His 
countrymen  prefer  form  to  substance  ;    they 
judge  reason  by  its  political  and  social  tenden- 
cies ;    no  wonder  if  in  such  a  latitude  systems 
freeze  into  scholastic  repetitions  and  the  dis- 
covery of  unknown  truth  becomes  impossible. 
What  is  the  cure  for  this  ?    Renan,  still  prais- 
ing M.  Cousin,  would  recommend  an  infusion 
of  science,  mathematics,  and  above  all  of  history. 


The  Scholar   in   Partis        91 

Education  is  now  only  a  training  in  literature, 
which  means  declamation.  But  the  history  of 
the  human  mind, — not  as  an  individual,  which 
was  the  mistake  of  former  studies, — no,  as  it 
moves  in  nations  and  epochs, — that,  says 
Renan,  is  the  philosophy  we  should  acquire. 
Cousin  defends  the  established  religion  ;  what 
has  he  to  tell  us  about  dogma,  Bible,  the  con- 
tents of  that  for  which  he  stands  up  ?  Just 
nothing  at  all.  In  like  manner  he  bows  to  the 
French  Revolution,  which  was  but  a  Gallic 
episode,  not  a  European  turning-point ;  and 
then,  despairing  of  his  own  time,  seeks  refresh- 
ment in  the  more  heroic  period  of  the  Fronde. 
It  is  well.  To  pursue  the  ideal,  though  we 
should  never  attain  to  it,  brings  an  abundant 
reward. 

Those  who  would  measure  the  resources  of 
French  phrase,  should  examine  this  piercing, 
yet  perfectly  well-mannered,  essay  side  by  side 
with  M.  Taine's  on  the  same  subject.  In 
sentiment  there  is  little  difference  ;  in  delicacy 
and  point  Renan  has  all  the  advantage  of  a 
supple  genius,  disporting  itself  at  ease.  Taine 
is  strong,  satirical,  somewhat  forced  j  his  blows 


9  2  Renan 

are  heavy  as  they  are  telling.  But,  at  the  age 
of  thirty-five,  the  quondam  Sulpician  has 
polished  his  instrument  like  a  born  courtier  ; 
he  knows  its  powers  and  uses  it  as  an  enchanted 
sword,  irresistibly  keen.  In  a  moral  aspect  the 
sight  is  not  pleasant,  for  Cousin  had  laid  him 
under  a  debt  of  gratitude.  His  excuse  might  be 
that  he  was  criticizing  the  University,  drawing 
attention  to  the  barrenness  of  purely  French 
ideas.     But  why  not  choose  another  target  ? 

In  writing  about  Lamennais,  his  sympathy 
was  more  sincere  ;  not  that  he  admired  Liberal 
Catholicism,  which  he  reprobated  in  the  name 
of  St.  Sulpice,  "  that  suave  and  touching  remi- 
niscence of  the  past  "  ;  nor  that  he  could  away 
with  democracy,  or  trusted  in  any  fanatical 
movement ;  but  he  understood  his  fellow-pro- 
vincial. Lamennais  thought  he  did  well  to 
be  angry  ;  his  eloquent  hatred  was  a  burning 
sombre  flame  ;  he  should  have  gone  out  from 
the  Church  by  "  the  royal  road  of  history  and 
criticism,"  whereas  he  did  but  exchange  an 
absolute  creed  for  its  opposite.  One  great 
thing  he  had  wrought.  The  Words  of  a  Believer^ 
which   men  might  praise  without  reserve    on 


I 

N 


■S^'j 


'  r\  "SI  N'  V^  «^  V  ^  ^x 


X 


r 


^%. 


-=^ 


t 


N 


^ 

Oi 

^ 


The  Scholar  in   Paris        93 


condition  that  they  did  not  think  of  copying 
it.    "  I  never  read  those  stirring  pages,"    said 
Renan,  "  without    an    impression  of    contag- 
ious magic  "  ;  their  rude  austerity,  sudden  ten- 
derness, and  languor  in  the  midst  of  an  over- 
mastering rage,  were  absolutely  Breton.     Yet 
a   "  respectful  irony  "  was  something  better. 
"  Disdain,"    said   the   critic,    "  almost   always 
produces  a  delicate  style  "  ;   but  anger  is  often 
in  bad  taste.     Thus  far  the  Epicurean  who, 
yielding  to  a  kindlier  emotion,  confesses  that 
Lamennais'  impatience  was  due  to  "  the  unrest 
of  a  noble  spirit."     He  adds,  with  a  glance  at 
himself,  "The  man  that  God  has  touched  is 
always  a  being  apart."      And  so  he  would  fain 
give  hospitality  to  this  wandering  soul,  whose 
thoughts,  however,  had  been   "  too  simple  to 
be  true." 

Professing  German  ideas  in  a  mere  literary 
Paris,  opposed  to  the  ways  of  the  University, 
and  claiming  the  right  of  private  judgment 
under  Napoleon  III.,  who  was  nervously 
anxious  to  keep  on  terms  with  St.  Michael, 
while  not  putting  down  Satan  too  violently,  it 
was  clear  that  Renan  would  raise  up  foes  on 


94  Ren  ait 

every  side.  To  J.  J.  Weiss,  who  wanted  such 
a  quarrel,  Taine  wrote  in  January  1858,  "  I 
regret  what  you  say  about  Renan.  I  know 
him  personally  ;  I  own  that  his  hands  arc  too 
ecclesiastically  gloved  ;  but  he  is  very  eager, 
attached  to  his  convictions,  immensely  learned, 
rich  in  general  ideas ;  he  has  the  refinement  of 
an  artist  and  a  man  of  the  world  ;  he  will  be 
one  of  the  great  men  of  this  century."  Others 
divined  his  coming  influence.  Augustin 
Thierry,  to  whose  place  in  the  Academy  of 
Inscriptions  Renan  succeeded  in  1856,  and 
who  died  a  Catholic,  had  taught  him  how  facts 
might  be  made  interesting  and  historical 
periods  set  out  in  bold  relief.  M.  de  Sacy,  an 
old-world  Jansenist,  treated  him  as  a  favourite 
pupil,  when  they  met  at  the  office  of  the  Journal 
des  Debats,  where  Renan  exercised  his  pen 
with  effect  in  the  cause  of  freedom.  For 
he  was  a  Liberal,  as  Englishmen  construe  the 
word,  though  he  felt  some  hankerings  after 
protection  for  those  frail  objects,  art  and  litera- 
ture, which  the  crowd  is  only  too  apt  to  trample 
down  in  its  march. 

His  home  life  was  exceedingly  happy.     Hen- 


The  Scholar   in   Paris        95 

riette  and  Cornelie  vied  in  devotion  to  him. 
He  lost  a  little  daughter,  Ernestine  ;  but  his 
boy,  Ary,  who  figures  in  the  correspondence  as 
Bebe,  lived  to  be  a  poet  and  draughtsman  of 
promising  skill.  His  mother  had  now  given 
up  Treguier.  She  was  living  under  the  same 
roof  with  her  children  in  the  Val  de  Grace, 
and  resigned  herself  (somewhat  as  Carlyle's 
mother  in  circumstances  not  unlike)  to  the 
ways  of  a  son  who  assured  her  that  his  relig- 
ion was  at  heart  the  worship  of  Jesus.  She 
could  not  but  feel  elated  as  he  grew  famous  in 
so  brilliant  a  sphere.  Full  of  spirit,  herself  a 
woman  of  great  natural  endowments,  she  soft- 
ened Henriette's  austerity  and  brought  out 
the  livelier  gifts  of  her  daughter-in-law. 

M.  Ary  Scheffer  died  in  1858.  But  another 
death  had  occurred,  several  months  previously, 
on  which  the  future  of  Renan,  his  wife,  and 
his  sister,  was  to  depend.  M,  de  Quatremere 
had  expired  in  September  1857,  leaving 
the  chair  of  Hebrew  vacant  in  the  Col- 
lege de  France.  It  was  a  position  that  his 
most  distinguished  pupil  meant  to  inherit. 
But    how    would   public   opinion   regard    the 


9  6  Renan 

authorities  who  should  put  the  Bible,  as  it  were 
officially,  into  Kenan's  hands  ?  To  ask  for 
it  was  like  throwing  down  a  gage  of  battle. 
"  I  cannot,  however,"  he  wrote  to  Berthelot, 
"  accept  for  myself  or  for  science  the  part  of 
cafitis  minor.''^  He  appeared  as  a  candidate ; 
the  engagement  was  begun. 

Kenan's  apology  for  his  act  will  be  quoted 
in  due  course.  But  we  may  say  at  once  that 
the  College  dc  France  was  never,  it  would 
seem,  an  ecclesiastical  institution  ;  and,  though 
at  Oxford  Pusey  insisted  on  teaching  Hebrew 
as  a  part  of  divinity,  this  view  could  scarcely 
find  favour  with  a  mere  critic.  "  Independent 
science  "  was  the  cry  on  one  side  ;  "  respect 
for  the  established  religion  of  Frenchmen," 
was  retorted  on  the  other.  Some  of  the  less 
wise  declared  that  Renan  was  ignorant  of 
Hebrew.  He  answered  by  publishing  a  re- 
markable translation  of  the  Book  of  Job,  and 
an  ingenious,  if  too  fanciful,  dramatic  interpre- 
tation of  Solomon's  Song.  There  could  be  no 
doubt  that  he  was  qualified  to  fill  a  chair  of 
Semitic  languages ;  whether  in  that  chair  he 
might   express   himself   freely   concerning   the 


The  Scholar  in   Paris       97 

Sacred  Scriptures  was  a  question  of  propriety 
and  public  order.  The  nomination  did  not 
take  place  at  this  time.  A  substitute  was 
appointed,  and  Renan  still  maintained  his  can- 
didature. He  would  offer  no  compromise. 
The  Emperor,  whose  religious  indifference  was 
absolute,  looked  round  for  a  distinction  which 
he  might  bestow  on  this  unconquered  Liberal. 
The  French  troops  were  about  to  occupy  the 
Lebanon,  as  in  1849  they  had  occupied  Rome. 
Napoleon  offered  him  a  mission  in  search  of 
Phoenician  antiquities,  not  very  largely  en- 
dowed, and,  on  Henriette's  advice,  he  accepted 
the  charge.  His  sister  made  up  her  mind  to 
go  with  him.  Ary  was  to  be  left  at  home  ; 
Cornelie  might  follow  her  husband  after- 
wards. Berthelot  saw  his  two  friends  off  at 
Marseilles,  where  they  embarked  for  Beyrout 
in  a  French  transport  on  October  21,  i860. 


Chapter    IV 

GALILEE    AND    AFTERWARDS 

FROM  this  voyage  Henriette  was  never 
to  return.  Her  brother's  absorption  in 
his  work  grew  daily.  He  had  ceased  to 
be  a  lively  correspondent,  as  in  his  Italian 
tour  ;  the  pains  which  he  spent  on  authorship 
forbade  it.  All  his  mind  was  given  to  that 
daring  enterprise  which  shone  through  the 
Syrian  expedition  and  above  it  like  a  star.  In 
his  Future  of  Science  we  observed  the  prophetic 
words  which  announced  that  the  greatest  book 
of  the  nineteenth  century  would  be  entitled, 
The  Critical  History  of  the  Christian  Origins. 
Even  now  the  image  of  a  human  and  ideal 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  filled  his  imagination.  He 
was  not  destined  to  bring  back  from  Tyre  and 
Sidon  much  that  an  archaeologist  would  value. 
But  the  landscape  of  Galilee,  the  Syrian  sky, 
the   beauty  of   Hermon   and   Lebanon — these 

98 


Galilee  and  Afterwards     99 

were  to  be  his  great  discoveries.  And  for  them 
Henriette  paid  with  her  life — no  reluctant 
victim. 

They  reached  Beyrout  in  the  early  days 
of  November  i860.  "  If  you  would  set  eyes 
on  the  strangest  mixture  of  things  charming 
and  hideous,"  Renan  wrote  to  his  friend,  "  a 
natural  scenery  of  which  the  grace  is  be- 
yond words,  an  incomparable  sky,  a  sea  that 
is  a  wonder,  the  finest  mountains,  the  filthi- 
est cities,  a  horrible  race  not  wanting  in 
exquisite  types,  and  society  in  the  lowest  stage, 
come  out  hither."  Lebanon  intoxicated  him. 
These  smiling  Alps  were  the  paradise  of 
God.  His  magnificent  health,  in  which  he 
put  too  much  confidence,  and  this  delightful 
season,  urged  him  to  labour  and  to  move 
about  incessantly,  accompanied  by  his  sister 
when  possible,  bent  as  he  was  on  finding 
inscriptions  and  monuments  by  day,  and  at 
night  busy  with  his  writing.  They  took  up 
their  regular  quarters  at  Amschit,  not  far  from 
the  ancient  Byblos,  lodging  with  a  wealthy 
Maronite,  Zakhia,  in  a  pleasant  house  which 
overlooked  the  sea. 


lOO  Renan 

Berthelot  had  just  brought  out  the  work 
on  synthetic  chemistry,  which  Renan  called 
his  Propylcea.  It  was  a  success,  and  to  the 
explorer  a  challenge.  It  spurred  him  to 
activity ;  while  his  anxious  friend  talked  of 
Syrian  fever,  and  Hcnriette  mourned  over  a 
selfish  devotion  to  art  which  seemed  to  kill 
affection,  the  days  passed.  Cornelie,  it  was 
decided,  should  join  them  at  once  ;  Berthelot 
projected  an  expedition  also,  but  could  never 
manage  it.  If  any  words  might  persuade  him, 
Kenan's  description  of  ruined  Maschnaka  would 
have  succeeded.  "  It  is  the  valley  of  Adonis," 
he  said,  "  if  we  may  term  that  a  valley  which 
is  a  precipice  more  than  a  thousand  feet  down, 
the  space  between  no  more  than  a  few  hundred. 
There  begin  the  lasting  snows  of  winter.  On 
the  horizon,  the  white  domes  of  Aphaca.  The 
contrast  of  snowy  wind  and  brilliant  sun  is  in- 
describable. Two  glaciers,  not  large,  in  two 
sunless  hollows,  are  enchanting."  The  valley  of 
the  river  Adonis  appeared  in  his  eyes  the  most 
ravishing  sight  he  had  ever  seen.  "  One  can 
fancy  nothing  more  romantic  or  more  solemn. 
It  is  a  landscape   made   for  lamentation  over 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  i  o  i 


the   dead  gods."     At  no  great  distance  from 
this  place  Henriette  was  to  find  a  tomb. 

Her  first  illness  occurred  in  February  i86l. 
Of  her  brother  she  wrote  that  he  was  no  longer 
the  same,  he  was  quite  transformed.  Berthelot, 
deeply  troubled,  begged  them  both  to  return. 
"  I  believe  your  sister  is  always  ill,"  he 
insisted ;  "  let  her  come  back."  Ernest, 
however,  would  not  hearken.  He  went  on 
with  his  excavations  at  Tyre,  after  which 
they  set  out  for  Galilee  and  Jerusalem, 
arriving  in  May  at  the  Holy  City.  Thirty- 
four  days,  never  to  be  forgotten  by  him, 
were  spent  in  Palestine,  and  at  the  end  of 
July  Cornelie  quitted  her  husband.  She 
was  expecting  the  birth  of  another  child. 
Henriette  should  now  have  gone  home.  The 
French  army,  suffering  from  fever,  were  leav- 
ing Syria.  But  she  lingered,  though  terribly 
fatigued,  while  Ernest,  at  Ghazir  on  the  slopes 
of  Lebanon,  was  flinging  down  on  paper  as  fast 
as  he  could,  with  happy  eagerness,  his  vision 
of  the  "  gentle  Galilean."  From  Beyrout  he 
announced  triumphantly  to  Berthelot,  on 
September    12,   1861,  "  In   eight   days   it   will 


I  o  2  Renan 

be  finished."  Not  pale  phantoms  or  abstract 
types,  he  said,  but  living  figures, — such  were 
to  be  his  creations.  "  This  great  fragment  in 
my  portfolio  is  all  my  strength,"  he  declared, 
but  it  must  not  be  advertised  too  soon.  His 
friend  answered  on  September  26,  "  Your 
letter  breathes  I  know  not  what  secret  joy." 
Two  days  earlier  Henriette  had  passed  away 
at  Amschit. 

The  last  rites  were  given  to  her  by  a  good 
Maronite  priest  while  her  brother  was  lying 
unconscious  in  a  fever-dream.  He  had  not 
fancied  her  indisposition  serious  ;  and  he 
was  busy  embarking  his  monuments  at  Bey- 
rout,  when,  on  returning  to  Amschit,  the 
burning  sun  struck  him  down.  Except  for 
one  or  two  passing  moments,  he  did  not 
know  what  had  befallen  himself  or  his  beloved 
sister.  She  had  spoken  to  him  about  her  last 
will  ;  he  was  to  have  all  she  might  leave.  Her 
thoughts  dwelt  on  the  friends  at  home  ;  and  she 
excused  her  jealous  affection  for  him  by  say- 
ing, "  Je  t'ai  aime  comme  on  n'aime  plus."  On 
the  Tuesday,  at  three  in  the  morning,  she  died. 
Zakhia  opened  his  father's  tomb,  and  in  it  she 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  103 


found  a  resting-place,  hard  by  a  chapel  under 
the  palm-trees.  "  There  let  her  wait  for  me," 
wrote  Ernest,  in  after  days,  "  beneath  the  palms 
of  Amschit,  in  the  land  of  ancient  mysteries, 
nigh  unto  sacred  Byblos."   .   .  . 

Alone,  hardly  recovered,  and  with  a  deepen- 
ing sense  of  what  he  had  lost,  Renan  came  back 
to  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  and  to  the 
world  of  Paris.  Taine  writes  to  Edouard  de 
Suckau  on  February  8,  1862,  "  Renan  is 
returned  from  the  East  as  cross  as  an  owl  ; 
Berthelot  is  worn  out."  A  superficial  judg- 
ment ;  in  that  sturdy  constitution  of  the 
returned  pilgrim,  there  was  obstinacy,  but 
not  ill-humour.  He  was  now  meditating  the 
boldest  act  of  the  nineteenth  century.  That 
act  would  be  a  memorial  of  the  unknown 
Henriette,  whose  legacy  to  her  brother,  as  he 
often  said,  was  the  Lije  of  Jesus.  During  the 
pleasant  sojourn  at  Ghazir  it  had  been  thrown 
off  in  the  white  heat  of  inspiration,  kindled  by 
their  journey  together  as  they  went  up  from 
Galilee  to  Jerusalem  and  rode  back  again  to 
Lebanon.  "  Delightful  hours,  too  quickly 
vanished  !  "  he  cried,  when  she  was  no  more. 


I04  Re7ia7i 

"  Ah,  may  Eternity  be  like  them  !  From  morn- 
ing till  night  I  was  drunk  with  the  thought  that 
unrolled  itself  before  me.  I  fell  asleep  upon  it, 
and  the  first  ray  of  dawn  behind  the  mountain 
gave  it  back  to  me  clearer  and  more  living  than 
the  eve.  Henriette  watched  the  growth  of  my 
work  day  by  day  ;  when  I  had  finished  a  page, 
it  was  hers  to  copy  it.  In  the  evening  we 
walked  on  our  terrace  under  the  brilliant  stars  ; 
she  offered  me  her  thoughts,  remarkable  for 
their  tact  and  insight,  some  of  which  came  to 
me  as  a  revelation.  Her  joy  was  full ;  those 
moments,  doubtless,  were  the  sweetest  in  her 
life." 

There  is,  commonly,  in  great  crises,  a  union 
of  the  many  elements  which  make  for  drama. 
Kenan's  whole  soul  was  concentrated  on  his 
manuscript,  the  publication  of  which  would 
stir  all  France  and  might  be  his  ruin,  when 
he  found  himself  gazetted,  on  January  1 1,  1862, 
to  the  chair  of  Hebrew.  The  two  Academies 
had  sent  up  his  name  on  request  of  the  Minister. 
Napoleon  HI  appointed  him,  and  a  storm  of 
protest  at  once  broke  out. 

Oriental  scholars,  it   would   appear,  did  not 


Galilee  a?ia   Afterwai^ds  105 

believe  that  a  man  who  wrote  such  exquisite 
French  could  be  pedantic  enough  for  the 
teaching  of  dead  literatures.  Young  men  in 
the  Latin  Quarter  set  down  the  Liberal  who 
had  taken  the  Emperor's  bribe  as  a  renegade. 
Catholics  declared  the  nomination  an  insult 
to  their  faith.  And  Renan  himself,  who  never 
answered  critics,  but  whose  nerves  were  in 
good  order,  welcomed,  though  he  did  not  show 
any  indiscreet  exultation,  the  tumult  which 
brought  him  before  all  men's  eyes.  It  was  the 
path  to  glory  which  he  had  long  been  expect- 
ing to  see  open.  Friends  advised  him  to  begin 
his  course  on  a  special  subject,  in  the  hall  where 
his  predecessor  had  lectured  to  half-a-dozen 
students.  His  answer  was  that  he  would  do  so 
by  and  by.  First,  he  had  resolved  to  speak  on  his 
general  duties  as  a  teacher,  in  the  large  amphi- 
theatre of  the  College  de  France. 

The  day  came,  February  21,  1862.  Outside, 
the  crowd  was  so  violent  that  the  police  had 
to  clear  the  courtyard  by  force  ;  within,  the 
great  spaces  were  occupied  by  opposing  and 
opposed  battalions,  orthodox,  free-thinking, 
revolutionary.     Renan  was  greeted  with  hisses 


I  o  6  Renan 

and  applause.  But  for  twenty  minutes  he 
could  not  obtain  a  hearing.  His  written  dis- 
course was  read,  however,  at  length,  amid 
the  cheers  and  counter-cheers  which  broke 
it  into  fragments.  The  subject  in  itself  was 
worthy  of  philosophic  handling.  "  What  part 
have  the  Semites  contributed  to  Western 
civilisation,"  Renan  inquired.  "  They  have 
brought  us  religion,"  he  answered ;  "  to  them 
we  are  indebted  for  the  most  extraordin- 
ary of  moral  events  that  have  changed  the 
world."  Every  one  caught  the  allusion  ;  free- 
thinkers applauded.  Christians  turned  pale  with 
excitement.  The  speaker  did  not  pause  ;  but 
his  words  floated  uncertain  over  the  gather- 
ing storm.  "  An  incomparable  man,"  he 
continued,  reading  from  his  notes,  "  so  great 
that,  although  we  must  judge  of  all  things  in 
this  place  from  the  view  of  positive  science,  I 
would  not  gainsay  those  who,  struck  by  the  ex- 
ceptional character  of  his  work,  have  called 
him  God, — he  it  was  that  established  the  ever- 
lasting religion  of  humanity,  the  religion  of 
the  spirit."  But  he  went  on  to  say,  "  the 
high  thought  of  Jesus,  scarcely  understood  by 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  107 

His  disciples,  has  undergone  many  defeats," 
and  "  in  adopting  Christianity,  we  have  pro- 
foundly altered  it  ;  in  reality,  it  is  our  creation." 
By  this  time  all  was  a  sea  of  raging  sounds. 
The  young  Liberals  cheered  ;  their  opponents 
cried  out  at  this  blasphemer.  Taine,  who  was 
present,  remarked  afterwards  that  the  orator's 
action  was  "  somewhat  episcopal — a  bishop 
in  -partihus  infidelium,^^  and  so  were  certain 
phrases  of  his  lecture.  "  He  is  too  unctuous," 
concluded  the  severe  Hegelian.  But  an  unc- 
tion which  breaks  the  head  is  more  exasperat- 
ing than  a  quarter-staff.  The  Catholic  young 
men  could  not  forgive  him.  To  the  free- 
thinkers it  was  a  glorious  day  ;  they  "  applauded 
coarsely,"  says  Taine  once  more,  "  like  readers 
of  the  Stecle,^^  and  forming  a  procession  of 
umbrellas — it  was  raining  hard — they  went  off 
to  the  Rue  Madame  and  cheered  under  the  new 
professor's  windows.  He  had  escaped  from  the 
amphitheatre  by  a  side  exit.  The  irony  of 
circumstances  was  complete  when  Madame 
Veuve  Renan,  Catholic  and  orthodox,  came 
out  above,  to  receive  congratulations  from  this 
noisy  crowd  of  unbelievers  on  behalf  of  her  son. 


I  o  8  Reiian 

Next  day,  the  lectures  were  suspended  by- 
Government.  They  were  said  to  threaten 
public  order.  But  Renan  would  not  resign. 
For  two  years  he  went  on  accepting  the 
emoluments  of  his  chair,  and  teaching  Hebrew 
to  all  who  would  attend  his  lessons.  The 
Emperor  could  not  send  him  a  lettre  de  cachet^ 
and  there  was  no  Bastille.  On  the  other 
hand,  superior  persons  smiled  at  the  "  menace 
to  public  order  "  whicli  a  company  of  gen- 
darmes might  have  dealt  with  safely.  Yet 
the  question  in  Paris,  which  is  the  city  of  heat 
as  well  as  of  light,  was  more  serious  than 
it  would  have  seemed  in  any  other  European 
capital.  When  the  Bible  was  discussed  on  plat- 
forms, and  an  official  person,  almost  one  of 
the  Government,  as  French  opinion  held  and 
still  holds  in  all  such  cases,  could  openly  set 
down  Jesus  Christ  on  the  level  of  mere 
humanity,  there  was  danger  in  the  air.  Mr. 
Stuart  Mill,  no  enemy  to  freedom  of  thought 
and  speech,  has  told  us  that  "  undoubtedly 
the  manner  of  asserting  an  opinion,  even 
though  it  be  a  true  one,  may  be  very  ob- 
jectionable, and   may   justly  incur  severe  cen- 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  109 

sure."  We  might  ask,  also,  what  science  could 
hope  to  gain  by  Renan's  lecture,  in  presence  of  a 
chance  assembly,  the  purpose  of  which  was  not 
to  learn  anything,  but  to  manifest  its  like  or  dis- 
like of  the  heterodox  professor  ?  He  was  now 
doing,  under  provocation  if  we  will,  the  very 
thing  which  he  had  charged  upon  Victor  Cousin 
as  undignified.  Was  he  not  degrading  his 
erudition  to  politics  ?  His  friends  have,  in 
effect,  granted  so  much.  But  the  overpowering 
sense  of  his  "  great  fragment,"  now  secure 
in  his  portfolio,  drove  him  on  like  a  goad.  He 
yearned  for  the  battle  that  could  not  long 
be  delayed,  the  thunder  of  the  captains  and 
the  shouting. 

In  1847  he  had  written  from  Treguier 
to  his  fellow-student,  that  Christianity  was 
"  dead  and  well  dead  "  ;  that  nothing  could 
be  made  of  it  unless  it  were  transformed  ; 
and  that  he  perceived  in  their  own  century  the 
elements  of  a  new  religion.  This  latter  hope 
had  waned.  But  his  ideal  system  might  still 
wear  a  halo,  if  it  could  be  shown  that  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  was  its  supreme  expression.  Cer- 
tainly,  Renan  was  willing   to  make  converts  ; 


1 1  o  Renan 

the  hour  of  disappointment  had  not  sounded 
in  his  ears.  To  his  colleagues  he  now  addressed 
a  manifesto,  defending  his  inaugural  lecture,  on 
which  we  shall  have  more  to  say  by  and  by.  It 
ended  with  a  defiant  prophecy  that,  if  silenced 
in  his  chair,  he  could  still  publish  books  and 
find  an  audience  who  would  listen  to  him. 
The  allusion  was  transparent.  And  on  June  23, 
1863,  The  Life  of  Jesus  appeared. 

Its  success  was  immediate,  far-reaching,  and 
extraordinary.  In  November  sixty-five  thou- 
sand copies  had  been  sold.  But  that  was  only 
a  symptom  of  the  universal  interest.  On  all 
sides  men  looked  upon  the  volume  as  a  banner 
lifted  up,  which  must  be  attacked  or  defended. 
In  the  eyes  of  Catholics  it  was  a  crime  with- 
out parallel,  an  oflFence  against  God  and  man. 
The  fierce  assault  which  they  at  once  opened 
upon  it  made  The  Life  of  Jesus  known  to  every 
priest  in  France.  Not  a  clerical  meeting  was 
held  between  Provence  and  Brittany  but  its  de- 
merits came  up  for  discussion.  Abroad,  it  leaped 
into  fame  at  a  bound.  French  was  now,  as  it  long 
had  been,  the  common  language  of  society  and 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  1 1  i 

of  culture.  Such  a  book,  appearing  in  Eng- 
lish, would  have  taken  five  years  to  cross  the 
Channel.  To  England,  Bishop  Colenso  was  the 
critic  who  gave  offence,  but  who  could  not  win 
renown,  by  his  dull  cross-examining  of  the 
numbers  in  the  Pentateuch.  Strauss  had  put 
forward  his  theory,  which  resolved  the  Four 
Gospels  into  myth  and  allegory,  a  generation 
earlier.  But  to  the  frivolous  coteries  of  Paris 
that  German  professor  was  only  a  name  ;  and 
not  so  much  as  a  name  to  the  French  clergy 
at  large.  What,  then,  had  Renan  achieved  ? 
Something  great,  if  not  portentous.  Thanks 
to  his  unrivalled  command  of  language,  to  the 
colour  of  his  description,  to  the  suavity  of 
a  sentimentalism  which  enchanted  without 
rhetoric,  he  had  transformed  the  Gospels  into 
a  publication  of  the  day.  Dealing  with  pages 
hitherto  regarded  as  the  Latin  of  the  Mass, 
which  only  priests  recited,  while  none  but  the 
faithful  listened,  he  made  of  them  a  French 
classic,  and  the  least  orthodox  now  read  with 
surprise  how  beautiful  they  could  be. 

Not  for  a  moment  did  this  latest  of  New 
Testaments,  thus  boldly  thrown  upon  the  ways 


112  Renan 

of  men,  prevail  because  it  was  learned,  or  exact, 
or  creative  as  high  poetry  may  be  when  it  takes 
up  realities  from  the  past.  Renan  has  keenly 
observed  that  French  literature,  since  the  time 
of  Louis  XIII,  is  a  tertiary  formation  ;  it  is 
Greek  rendered  into  Latin,  and  this  again 
manipulated  by  Racine  or  Moliere,  to  suit  the 
people  of  the  Seine.  In  like  manner  his  own 
most  venturesome  book,  though  not  his  greatest, 
gives  back  the  Hebrew  strength  and  sweetness 
which  so  marvellously  work  upon  us  in  the 
Gospels,  not  as  he  finds  them  there,  but  quali- 
fied to  please  a  literary  taste.  His  version 
stands  to  St.  Matthew  or  St.  Luke  much  as 
Telemaque  stands  to  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey. 
A  man  of  letters  who  had  quarrelled  with 
Renan,  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  called  it  the 
Bible  fenelonise,  and  so  far  justly,  that  from  the 
"  swan  of  Cambray  "  its  author  had  learned 
the  secret  of  "  painting  by  moral  strokes,"  on 
which  he  prided  himself.  The  "  Hebrew 
truth,"  to  speak  with  St.  Jerome,  had  been 
softened  down  into  an  idyl,  which  was  not 
truly  Eastern,  but  which  corresponded  to  the 
decadent  mood  of  Paul  and  Virginia,  and  was 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  113 

sometimes   more  than  a  little    cloying  in  its 
over-sweetness. 

For  that  effect  several  reasons  may  be  assigned. 
Renan  had  never  passed  through  the  fire  of  a 
passion  that  cleanses  and  heightens  emotion. 
Though  the  son  of  many  prophets,  he  was  no 
prophet   himself.     His   art   is    delicate   rather 
than  sublime  ;  and  of  French  sentiment  the 
danger   has   always   been   a   pretty   affectation 
tending  towards  the  madrigal.     Again,  he  could 
not,  like  the  true  magician,  shoot  his  soul  into 
another  form  and  there  be  something  different 
from    what    he    was     by   nature.      He    drew 
portraits    by  looking   in    the   glass.     He  stays 
with  his  readers  and  in  front  of  them,  hinting 
how  like  the  picture  is  to  the  painter  by  subtle 
asides  and  a  knowing  smile.     Without  books, 
having  only  Josephus  and  the  Greek^New  Testa- 
ment at  hand,  dreaming  open-eyed   in  divine 
Galilee,  the  Breton  fancied  how  things  might 
have  seemed  to  him,  had  he  been  among  the 
disciples,  on  the  Lake  of  Gennesareth,  or  as  they 
went  through  the  Sabbath  fields,  and  plucked 
the  ripe  ears  of  corn.     That    which    was    in- 
stantly admired,  and  which  alone  will  not  be 


114  Renan 

forgotten,  in  the  Lije  of  Jesus,  was  the  Gali- 
lean episode.  The  landscape  gave  birth  to  the 
character,  not  any  well-interpreted  documents. 
But  again,  the  character  may  be  traced  in 
Kenan's  own  history  with  its  varying  stages  ; 
Brittany  is  the  key  to  Nazareth,  Paris  shadows 
forth  Jerusalem.  By  "  gently  soliciting  "  the  in- 
spired text,  as  he  admitted,  or,  says  M.  Seailles, 
by  arbitrary  cuttings  in  it  according  as  they 
suited  his  purpose,  Renan  put  together,  in 
mosaic  fashion,  a  sentimental  romance  which 
was  coloured  from  end  to  end  by  his  own 
experience. 

By  divination,  therefore,  and  by  conjecture, 
as  he  tells  us  at  the  outset,  was  a  task  so  formid- 
able to  be  fulfilled.  Not  that  Renan  con- 
sidered it  beyond  his  powers.  He  said  in  after 
years,  "  I  am  the  one  man  of  my  century  that 
has  understood  Jesus  and  St.  Francis  of  Assisi." 
The  sketch  of  that  "  Umbrian  Christ,"  which 
he  had  already  attempted,  was  a  prelude  to 
this  supreme  endeavour.  Yet  neither  sketch 
nor  masterpiece  can  be  judged  a  triumph  be- 
fore the  only  court  to  which,  in  his  Future  of 
Science,  the  author  would  have  appealed.     For 


Galilee   and  Afterwards  115 


the  facts  do  not  lead  up,  as  they  ought,  to  the 
explanation  ;  but,  contrariwise,  Renan  starts 
with  an  axiom  a  -priori  before  which  the  docu- 
ments give  way.  He  breaks  up  the  unity  of  a 
living  spirit  when  he  divides  between  the  legend 
and  the  truth,  rejects  the  miraculous,  and, 
however  more  exquisitely  than  Voltaire,  yet 
on  the  same  principles,  brings  down  the  life  of 
Saint  or  Saviour  to  a  moral  apologue. 

These  are  not  merely  the  views  of  orthodox 
Christians.  Strauss  had  resolved  the  Gospels 
into  a  myth,  no  part  of  which  could  be  verified, 
because  he  felt  that  they  must  be  taken  or 
left  as  a  whole.  George  Eliot,  his  translator, 
shared  that  opinion.  She  writes,  slightly  in 
Mr.  Casaubon's  vein,  "  For  minds  acquainted 
with  the  European  culture  of  the  last  half- 
century,  Renan's  book  can  furnish  no  new 
result  ;  and  they  are  likely  to  set  little  store  by 
the  too  facile  construction  of  a  life  from 
materials  of  which  the  biographical  significance 
becomes  more  dubious  as  they  are  more  closely 
examined."  She  would  not,  however,  cast 
utterly  away  the  "  Idea  of  Christ  "  ;  she  be- 
lieved in  a  "  sacred  past  of  one  woof  with  the 


1 1 6  Renan 

human  present."  Renan  might  have  echoed 
these  last  words  ;  but,  if  he  had  no  facts  to  go 
upon,  his  volume  was  simply  a  mixture  from 
the  painter's  palette.  Science,  in  that  event, 
would  pass  by  on  the  other  side.  Or,  again 
to  quote  George  Eliot,  "  this  Vie  de  Jesus,  and 
still  more,  Kenan's  Letter  to  Berthelot,  have  com- 
pelled me  to  give  up  the  high  estimate  I  had 
formed  of  his  mind."  Artistic  merit  he  cer- 
tainly did  possess  ;  but  he  was  not,  as  she  had 
reckoned  him,  among  the  finest  thinkers  of 
the  time. 

If  such  was  the  verdict  uttered  by  one  who 
marched  in  the  vanguard  towards  that  "  new 
religion  "  called  of  Humanity,  we  may  expect 
from  others,  like  Carlyle,  who  thought  history 
should  deal  with  what  had  really  happened,  a 
more  emphatic  condemnation.  Carlyle  disliked 
the  book,  and  wished  it  had  not  been  written. 
On  the  minds  of  German  scholars,  believing 
as  Tholuck,  or  sceptical  as  the  later  Strauss,  it 
left  no  trace  discernible.  "  Das  ist  nichts,"  said 
Tholuck,  many  days  afterwards,  to  an  American 
inquirer.  Ewald  and  Keim  were  severe  upon 
this  romance,  "  which  professed  to  deal  with 


Galilee  a7id  Afterwards  117 


great  questions,  but  which  answered  none."  And 
though  Renan  protested  against  such  criticism, 
it  was  only  an  exception  when  Mommsen 
declared  him  to  be  "  a  savant,  in  spite  of  his 
beautiful  style."  Tubingen  was  yet  in  the 
ascendant — a  school  "  without  tact  or  mea- 
sure," said  the  French  writer  almost  bitterly, 
which  carried  its  denials  too  far.  But,  we  may 
rejoin,  was  he  not  himself  imaginative  beyond 
the  letter  of  his  documents  ?  "  The  striking 
agreement  of  texts  and  situations,  the  wonder- 
ful concord  between  the  evangelical  idea 
and  the  country  that  served  as  its  frame," 
might  be  an  argument  when  we  had  evidence 
to  bear  it  up  ;  and  it  had  come  to  the  traveller 
as  a  revelation.  Yet,  surely,  taken  for  the 
ground  of  faith,  topography  was  not  enough. 
To  students,  as  to  believers,  Renan  brought 
no  message.  How,  then,  did  he  fare  with  his 
own  French  public,  in  the  "  diocese  of  Sainte 
Beuve,"  as  it  was  wittily  termed,  where  he 
pontificated  rather  more  than  to  austere  free- 
thinkers like  Tainc  was  pleasing  ? 

At    first,    loud    and    triumphant    was    their 
acclaim.     That   which   scandalized   Christians 


1 1 8  Renan 

gave  them  matter  of  exultation.  In  the 
struggle  for  life  and  death  between  Catholics 
and  infidels,  one  Name  had,  as  by  tacit  consent, 
been  respected.  True,  there  was  a  literature 
for  the  lower  classes  which  went  to  every 
length  ;  but  hitherto,  in  chairs  such  as  Renan 
occupied,  and  in  serious  writings,  the  Gospels 
were  treated  with  decorum.  A  new  thing  had 
come  to  pass.  When  the  Romans  besieged  an 
enemy's  city,  they  called  on  its  tutelar  gods  to 
leave  it  and  follow  them  to  the  Capitol.  This 
unhappy  fugitive  from  the  Christian  altar  was 
busy  with  a  like  incantation.  He  desired  to 
make  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth  an  idealist  who 
had  set  him  the  example,  a  free  spirit  in  revolt 
against  the  hierarchy.  The  cause  of  Jesus  was 
to  be  severed  from  that  of  the  Church  and  to 
be  identified  with  revolution.  Who  should  seize 
this  flag  was  now  the  question.  A  merely 
human  Jesus  would  be  ruin  to  all  possible 
creeds  which  rested  on  faith  in  God.  That 
was,  undoubtedly,  the  issue  at  stake  ;  and  how- 
ever little  prepared  for  so  fresh  a  problem, 
Catholics  like  Meignan,  afterwards  bishop 
and  cardinal  of  Tours,  saw  what  they  had  to 


Galilee  and  Afterwards   119 

encounter.  The  supernatural  would  be 
vanquished  if  Jesus  were  left  in  His  enemies' 
keeping. 

But  rebels  have  never  known  how  to  deal 
with  a  captive  king,  except  to  make  away  with 
him,  and  so  it  proved  now.  Renan,  in  spite  of 
his  art,  which  is  especially  cunning  in  its  juxta- 
position of  elements  not  by  nature  agreeing, 
fills  the  canvas  with  cloud  when  what  we  are 
seeking  is  light.  He  cannot  explain  the  mira- 
culous. His  wavering  policy  reduces  it  to 
legend,  misunderstanding,  illusion,  innocent 
deceit ;  all  subterfuges  of  his  own  tempera- 
ment, which  was  curiously  insensible  to  the 
abnormal,  and,  on  this  side,  was  not  less  frigid 
than  Hume's.  Renan  felt  uneasy  when  he 
heard  men  talk  of  Providence  ;  the  touch  of  a 
Divine  Hand  made  him  shiver.  He  meant  as 
decidedly  as  any  Rationalist  to  clear  away  the 
inexplicable  in  which  the  Gospels  abound. 
Then  the  dilemma  returns — were  those  miracles 
a  concession  to  credulity,  or  were  they  sincerely 
wrought  ?  Choose  either  alternative,  but  abide 
by  the  consequences.  A  miracle-working  teacher 
would  be  fatal  to  Renan's  scientific  principles  ; 


1 2  o  Renan 

a  Jesus  who  was  not  sincere,  though  but  a  re- 
luctant impostor,  would  be  no  pattern  for 
men  to  live  by.  Under  the  double  strain,  this 
new  construction  falls  to  pieces.  We  grasp 
in  it  no  distinct  figure,  and  that  which,  by 
design,  was  to  be  the  grandest  of  all  literary 
creations,  melts  into  mist  and  shadow  beyond 
the  domain  of  history  when  we  compare  it  to 
the  Gospels. 

In  a  sentence  that  drew  smiles,  Renan  has 
likened  himself  to  the  "  fabulous  beast  of 
Ctesias,"  one  half  of  which  devours  the  other 
half.  Contradiction  he  gloried  in,  when  his 
own  reasoning  led  up  to  it,  as  a  sign  that  he  saw 
all  round  the  object.  He  said  also  that  "  the 
real  is  a  vast  outrage  on  the  ideal."  Never- 
theless, it  is  wisely  observed  that  we  must  know 
the  life  of  Hamlet  before  we  can  invent  a  theory 
of  Hamlet.  The  application  is  immediate. 
What  did  Renan  mean  by  history  when  he 
called  it  to  M.  Berthelot  his  "  reason  "  ?  If 
not  facts  that  had  taken  place,  and  men  that 
had  thought  and  wrought  them,  could  it  be 
other  than  an  idle  dream  ?  To  this  note  of 
interrogation  his  answer  is,  "  What  you  will." 


MAUAMh    EK.NUbl     Kl-.NA.N. 


From  a  painting  by  Ary  Scli(J/\r. 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  1 2  i 


He  cannot  be  sure,  as  we  have  seen  repeatedly, 
whether  he  criticizes  dogma  because  it  is  im- 
possible, or  because  it  may  be  convicted  of 
falsehood.  Sometimes  his  argument  runs, 
"  Every  alleged  miracle  is  a  legend "  ;  but 
again  he  lets  that  fall  to  insist  on  discrepancies 
in  the  evidence.  He  is  realist  and  idealist  by 
turns.  The  illuminating  vision  of  a  Thucy- 
dides,  the  insight  of  a  Shakespeare  when 
moving  over  the  stage  of  time,  he  never  had. 

It  is  significant  that,  whether  dealing  with 
Old  Testament  or  New,  not  a  hint  drops  from 
his  pen  which  has  proved  fertile  of  undiscovered 
truths  regarding  either.  He  waits  upon  the 
Germans,  Baur  or  Strauss  or  Wellhausen,  from 
whose  conjectures  he  may  glean  for  his  poetry 
of  the  Bible.  He  has  cleared  up  no  difficulties, 
started  no  investigations,  fixed  no  disputable 
points  of  custom  or  language.  His  contribu- 
tion to  the  Gospel  is  a  dissolving  view  where 
the  hallucinated  writer  infects  with  his  fancies 
a  reader  who  is  taken  by  delightful  words.  His 
sympathies  even  for  the  highest  are  inter- 
mittent. He  loves  the  Jesus  of  Galilee  ;  when 
the  last  days  come  at  Jerusalem  and  a  tragic 


12  2  Re?ian 

note  is  sounded,  too  deep  for  his  calm  temper, 
he  hesitates,  is  bewildered,  and  turns  from  the 
scene.  He  cannot  endure  a  crucified  Christ, 
or  allow  any  substance  to  a  risen  one.  The 
glory  of  Jesus,  he  affirms,  does  not  consist  in 
His  being  relegated  beyond  history ;  a  true 
devotion  will  show  that  all  history  is  incom- 
prehensible without  Him.  Yet  this  "  capital 
event  in  the  world's  record,"  unique  as  it  is 
confessed  to  be,  our  fifth  evangelist  leaves 
unresolved  into  its  only  adequate  causes.  For 
neither  Christian  nor  Antichristian  has  ac- 
cepted the  phantom,  which  is  all  that  Renan 
presents  to  them  as  an  historical  reality. 

In  truth,  we  cannot,  to  please  George  Eliot 
or  any  of  her  school,  divide  "  the  idea  of  Christ " 
from  "  the  man  Jesus."  As  well  might  we 
attempt  to  understand  Christianity  itself,  with- 
out following  back  its  pedigree  in  Israel  to 
the  Hebrew  prophets.  But  Renan,  by  appeal- 
ing at  one  time  to  the  pure  idea  and  at 
another  to  the  Gospel  story,  on  no  fixed 
principle  of  which  we  can  take  account,  has 
evaporated  into  ether  that  supreme  personality 
which  is  the  incarnation  of  both. 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  123 

It  has  been  lately  said  of  Kenan's  Lije  of 
Jesus  that  it  is  "  by  far  the  most  subtle  attempt 
ever  made  to  deprive  Christ  of  His  divine 
attributes,  and  reduce  Him  to  the  level  of  a 
mere  philosopher  or  dreamer."  So  much  may 
be  granted,  and  no  manipulation  of  epithets, 
designedly  vague,  will  restore  the  true  linea- 
ments on  a  canvas  like  this,  the  ground-tone  of 
which  is  mere  Nature.  On  the  other  hand, 
from  a  scandal  so  arresting,  and  of  such  pro- 
portions, which  has  been  perpetuated  in  thirty- 
three  editions  at  home,  with  translations  and 
cheap  issues  in  every  European  language,  one 
result,  hardly  anticipated  by  its  author,  is 
becoming  daily  more  evident.  The  Life  of 
Christ,  passing  from  technical  theology,  from 
catechisms  and  sermons,  into  literature,  vindi- 
cates to  itself  an  importance  as  the  first  in 
every  sense  of  human  biographies,  and  the 
centre  of  history.  Between  sacred  and  pro- 
fane the  old  wall  of  division  has  been  broken 
down.  It  is  impossible  for  any  man  to  explain 
the  world  without  fixing  his  regard  on  Jesus. 
He  is  real  to  the  present  generation,  even  of 
those  who  do  not  believe,  as  He  never  was  to 


124  Re7ian 

the  Voltairian  or  the  free-thinker  of  a  previous 
age.  Theologians  comprehend,  in  a  more  vivid 
fashion  than  ever  before,  that  creeds  and  dog- 
mas are  but  aspects  of  His  words.  His  works. 
His  personality.  Critics  know  that  they  have 
to  deal  with  Him  as  a  fact.  And  the  relation 
of  Church  and  Testament  is  explored  on  all 
sides,  with  a  view  to  discovering  the  Founder 
in  the  institution,  and  to  bring  out  His  truth 
in  the  record. 

No  "  Life,"  indeed,  undertaken  by  a  modern, 
is  likely  to  satisfy  the  demands  both  of  critical 
science  and  of  vital  religion  ;  yet  none,  perhaps, 
has  been  entirely  a  failure.  Of  Kenan's  own 
it  must  be  allowed  that  the  Galilean  pages  are 
often  exquisite  as  landscape,  or  setting,  or  em- 
broidery on  a  theme  which  was  constantly  too 
great  for  him.  If  we  take  his  point  of  view, 
the  everlasting  splendour  of  Deity  fades  from 
that  countenance  ;  but  there  is  left  a  simple 
yet  profound  sense  of  joy  in  this  renewal  of 
the  world's  youth,  amid  a  flowering  Paradise, 
where  the  disciples  troop  about  their  Master, 
and  He  awakens  in  them  all  the  qualities  that 
were  soon  to  be  called  Christian — humility, 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  125 

faith,  detachment,  an  eager  looking  for  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  It  is  a  pastoral  play  over 
which  floats  the  music  of  the  Beatitudes  ;  a 
story  that  runs  into  parables  and  delights  in 
imagery  caught  from  the  life  around,  from  lake 
and  field,  springtide  and  harvest,  while  the 
fierce  hubbub  of  an  unregenerate  world  sounds 
only  as  a  murmur  afar  off.  All  this  Renan 
touches  with  a  pencil  the  effect  of  which  is 
often  something  too  soft ;  we  are  put  in  mind 
of  the  Caracci  ;  but  he  succeeds  admirably  in 
what  Catholic  writers  term  the  "  composition 
of  place,"  or  the  framework  for  devout  medita- 
tion. 

He  is,  of  course,  not  equal  to  the  loftier  task 
of  delineating  character.  At  no  time  has 
he  set  before  us  any  other  than  his  own. 
Trained  in  the  seminary  to  abstract  reasoning, 
brought  up  on  texts  and  analysis,  busy  with 
small  points  of  criticism,  and  not  very  observant 
of  life  as  he  went  his  way,  the  student  could 
never  be  a  creator.  He  is  not  direct  enough 
in  his  strokes,  nor  can  he  deliver  them  with 
force  and  sharpness  enough,  to  fix  on  our 
memories   a   clear   outline.     We   should  never 


12  6  Renan 

have  known  Jesus  or  His  chosen  followers,  had 
we  to  learn  our  Gospel  for  the  first  time  in  these 
chapters,  which  engage  us  while  we  read  them, 
but  which  melt  into  a  summer-cloud  when 
we  have  laid  the  book  aside. 

Though  by  temper  sceptical,  Renan  was  not 
disposed  to  follow  his  German  guides  to  their 
extreme  conclusions.  When  he  has  to  tell  of 
the  last  scenes  at  Jerusalem,  he  quotes  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John  as,  to  a  large  extent, 
authentic  ;  he  accepts  the  episode  of  Bethany- 
more  or  less  from  his  hands  ;  the  discourses, 
we  are  told,  cannot  be  relied  upon,  but 
the  facts  were  familiar  to  the  Fourth  Evan- 
gelist. A  position  so  conservative  roused  up 
the  younger  Teutons  ;  and  in  later  editions 
Renan  yielded  somewhat  under  their  attack. 
But  he  maintained  always  that,  however  per- 
plexing the  Johannine  problem  might  be,  there 
was  no  reasonable  ground  for  dissociating 
the  Apostle  from  a  work  which  embodied 
his  reminiscences.  And  he  thought  a  more 
moderate  view  would  tone  down  the  "  rigour 
and  vigour,"  as  Matthew  Arnold  termed 
it,  of  Baur's  absolute  denials.      This,   thanks 


Galilee  and  Afterwards  127 

to  fresh  documents  and  a  less  airy  method, 
has  actually  come  to  pass.  Arnold  himself, 
though  no  great  authority  as  regards  evi- 
dence, was  much  too  fine  a  critic  not  to  per- 
ceive that  in  the  themes  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
a  kinship  may  be  established  with  what  we 
possess  in  the  other  three.  If,  as  Renan  is 
never  tired  of  repeating,  Jesus  "  was  more  than 
the  reformer  of  an  old  religion,"  if  He  created 
"  the  everlasting  religion  of  humanity,"  then 
His  assertions  about  Himself  in  St.  John  are 
inevitable  echoes  of  words  uttered  in  the  vehe- 
ment disputes  at  Jerusalem  which  led  up  to 
the  end.  He  who  declared  Himself  to  be  the 
Messiah,  could  not  but  claim  the  powers  and 
attributes  of  which  those  discourses  are  so 
emphatic  in  their  ascription  to  Him.  Such 
claims  are  already  visible  in  the  Synoptics  ; 
and  nothing  else  would  suffice  to  account  for 
the  charges  on  which  Jesus  was  condemned 
to  death  by  the  Jewish  Sanhedrim. 

Our  Gospels  take  us  on  to  the  Resurrection. 
But  Renan  pauses  when  Calvary  is  reached. 
For  him  the  Son  of  Man  now  enters  into  the 
ideal,  which  becomes  a  kind  of  immortality.    He 


12  8  Renan 

addresses  Christ  on  the  cross  in  terms  of 
passionate  recognition.  "  Thou,  "  he  exclaims, 
"  art  destined  to  become  the  corner-stone  of 
Humanity  in  such  wise  that  to  tear  Thy  name 
from  this  world,  would  be  to  shake  it  to  its 
foundations."  And  he  concludes  by  saying  that 
"  whatever  be  the  unexpected  events  of  the 
future,  Jesus  will  never  be  surpassed.  His 
worship  will  renew  its  youth  unceasingly ; 
his  legend  will  call  forth  tears  without  end  ; 
his  sufferings  will  touch  the  best  of  hearts ;  all 
ages  will  proclaim  that  among  the  sons  of  men 
a  greater  was  never  born  than  Jesus." 


Chapter   V 

IN    ST.    PAUL'S    FOOTSTEPS 

WHILE  his  book  was  making  such  a 
stir,  Renan  with  his  family  had 
been  enjoying  a  summer  expedi- 
tion to  Dinard,  from  which  they  went  on,  in 
August  1863,  to  Jersey.  He  had  resolved  not 
to  answer  his  critics ;  but  he  wrote,  not  quite 
in  his  usual  temper,  to  a  Scottish  friend, 
Mr.  (now  Sir  Mountstuart)  Grant  Duff, 
"  Sometimes,  I  confess,  when  I  observe  the 
rage  that  my  volume  has  provoked  among  the 
orthodox,  I  almost  repent  of  having  published 
it.  I  did  not  expect  so  much  passion  or  party 
spirit.  However,  what  I  have  done  was  in 
absolute  sincerity."  His  friend  Berthelot,  not 
many  days  later,  told  him,  "  When  you  come 
back,  you  will  not  be  merely  assailed  with 
small  troubles  ;  look  out  for  a  storm  of  con- 
tradiction   and    hatred  : — pope,    archbishops, 

129  g 


130  Renan 

bishops,  cures,  deacons  and  subdeacons,  not  to 
speak  of  the  third  order  and  the  sons  of  ex- 
Liberals.  But  you  will  get  the  upper  hand  of 
all  that  by  holding  to  your  opinions  ;  Voltaire 
stood  out  well,  without  much  persecution. 
But  you  are  in  for  it  as  long  as  you  live  ;  and 
you  will  escape  persecution  simply  if  you  never 
flinch.  Your  name  will  be  conspicuous  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  as  the  philosophers  were  in 
the  eighteenth.  The  insistence  and  lasting 
hatred  of  Catholics  will  suffice  to  point  out 
your  way." 

Berthelot  added  that  the  Empress  Eugenie, 
who  of  course  did  not  share  Kenan's  views, 
defended  his  freedom  as  a  writer  ;  but  that 
neither  friend  nor  foe  expected  the  resumption 
of  his  lectures  at  the  College  de  France.  The 
lecturer  was  not  daunted.  He  might  be 
deprived  of  his  chair,  but  the  public  would 
buy  and  read  him  ;  a  strong  body  of  opinion, 
which  had  its  centre  in  Paris,  would  back  him 
up.  M.  Taschereau  had  offered  him  a  position 
as  Under-Keeper  of  MSS.  in  the  Imperial 
Library,  where  he  was  formerly  an  assistant, 
with   seven   thousand   francs   a   year  ;   but  he 


In  St.  PatcPs  Footsteps      131 

could  not  hold  it  and  continue  to  be  professor 
of  Hebrew.  He  had  answered  by  a  distinct 
refusal  on  that  very  ground.  He  thought  of 
demanding  from  M.  Duruy  permission  to  open 
a  "  free  course  "  ;  if  that  were  not  allowed, 
he  would  come  forward  as  a  Parliamentary 
candidate  for  Pans.  Berthelot,  who  was  in 
close  relations  with  Government,  replied  to 
his  friend  that  the  Emperor  minded  very  little 
about  the  lectures  in  themselves,  but  it  was 
a  question  of  public  order,  and  they  would 
inevitably  lead  to  disturbance.  "  France,"  he 
said,  "  is  in  no  condition  to  hear  scientific 
truth  without  passion  one  way  or  the  other  ; 
I  am  not  sure  that  other  countries  would 
be  more  patient  under  the  circumstances  in 
which  you  announce  it,  and  which  are  not  those 
of  abstract  erudition."  Kenan's  work  had 
been  great  and  successful ;  but  reaction  could 
not  be  avoided.  The  Lije  of  Jesus  was  not  a 
Life  of  Buddha  ;  it  implied  "  an  action  of 
propaganda,"  which  the  other  did  not.  Far 
from  being  engaged  in  pure  science,  Renan 
found  himself  in  the  midst  of  battle.  So 
judged  his  most  intimate  acquaintance  ;    and 


132  Renan 

we  ought  not  to  overlook  that  judgment  when 
the  champion  of  unbelief  deprecates,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  rage  of  party  spirit  that  had 
been  stirred  up  against  him.  Had  he  not 
stirred  it  up  himself  ? 

The  rest  of  the  story  is  soon  told.  In 
July  1862  the  professor,  on  being  silenced,  had 
addressed  to  his  colleagues  a  letter  which  was 
much  more  of  an  explanation  than  an  apology, 
as  regarded  his  inaugural  lecture.  He  pleaded 
for  perfect  freedom  as  a  scientific  man  to 
express  whatever  he  thought  to  be  true,  pro- 
vided his  language  was  respectful  towards  the 
object  of  it  and  kept  clear  of  religious  contro- 
versy. There  had  never  existed  in  the  College 
de  France  a  chair  of  divinity  proper.  That 
lay  institution,  founded  by  Francis  I,  aimed  at 
learning  rather  than  teaching  ;  it  investigated 
and  explored.  What  Renan  himself  intended 
was  a  course  of  Hebrew  literature  as  such  ; 
and  if  he  had  drawn  upon  general  considerations 
in  beginning  it,  he  did  but  follow  the  ordinary 
custom.  For  his  method  he  appealed  to 
Reuchlin,  Henri  Etienne  and  Descartes,  who 
were    scholars    but    did   not    pretend    to    be 


///  iSV.  PaiiPs  Footsteps      133 

theologians ;  as  for  the  condition  which  deter- 
mined his  handling  of  the  Bible,  that  also  was 
scientific,  namely,  the  exclusion  of  miracles  or 
the  supernatural  from  all  arguments  which 
dealt  with  facts.  And  he  proceeded  to  quote 
M.  Littre,  the  Positivist,  whose  words  to  this 
effect  were  constantly  on  his  lips.  But  to 
separate  religion  from  the  supernatural  was 
not  to  be  irreligious.  The  notion  of  miracles 
was  a  lost  cause.  He  ended  by  saying  that  he 
would  not  be  stopped  by  any  one  and  that  he 
could  wait.  If  to-day  ten  people  would  not 
listen  while  he  spoke,  to-morrow  ten  thousand 
would  read  what  he  had  written.  In  1863  his 
prophecy  had  been  more  than  fulfilled  ;  but 
he  was  not  to  lecture  again  in  the  chair  of 
Hebrew  for  many  years. 

His  Liberal  friends  were  now  anxious  that 
he  should  come  out  as  a  candidate  in  Paris  for 
the  Corps  Legislatif.  But  in  face  of  a  strong 
opposition.  Conservative  as  well  as  Catholic,  he 
had  no  chance.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  Renan 
as  a  popular  chief  ;  he  was  better  guided  by 
instinct  when  he  turned  his  back  on  the 
insignificant  party-strifes  of  the  next  few  years, 


134  Renan 

and  visited  the  cradle-lands  of  Christianity 
once  more.  In  November  1864  he  arrived  at 
Alexandria  on  his  way  to  the  East.  By  this 
time  his  quarrel  with  Government  had  passed 
into  the  fifth  and  last  act.  On  June  2  the 
world  had  been  informed,  by  means  of  an 
official  report  in  the  Moniteur,  that  a  new 
chair  of  Comparative  Philology  would  absorb 
the  funds  previously  allocated  to  the  chair  of 
Hebrew.  But  by  way  of  compensation,  M. 
Renan  was  named  Assistant-Keeper  of  MSS. — 
an  offer  which  he  had  rejected  nine  months 
earlier. 

That  very  day  he  sent  to  the  Minister  of 
Education  a  polite  but  scathing  letter,  declin- 
ing the  functions  thrust  upon  him,  and  firm 
in  his  contention  that  he  had  never  been 
deprived  of  his  post.  He  had  not  given  up 
teaching  ;  as  for  the  stipend  which  was  paid 
him,  "  science,"  he  said,  "  takes  into  account 
the  results  achieved,  not  the  carrying  out  more 
or  less  punctually  of  a  regulation  ;  if,  AI.  le 
Ministre,  you  ever  make  it  a  reproach  that  the 
scientific  man  who  does  honour  to  his  country 
has  not  earned  the  poor  allowance  which  the 


In  St.  Paul's  Footsteps      135 

State  doles  out  to  him,  believe  me,  he  will 
answer  you  as  I  do  at  this  moment,  and  after 
an  illustrious  example,  '  Pecunia  tua  tecum  sit.' 
Apply  then,  M.  le  Alinistre,  the  funds  voted 
for  the  chair  of  Hebrew,  Chaldee,  and  Syriac 
to  any  purpose  you  think  proper.  I  shall  keep 
the  title  which  I  owe  to  the  double  presenta- 
tion of  the  professors  in  the  College  de  France 
and  my  colleagues  at  the  Institute.  Without 
a  stipend  I  will  discharge  the  duties  laid  on  me 
by  that  title,  and  do  my  utmost  to  promote 
the  studies  entrusted  to  my  keeping." 

This  challenge  was  answered  by  a  fresh 
decree  signed  "  Napoleon,"  in  the  Moniteur 
of  June  12,  which  cancelled  Kenan's  appoint- 
ment to  the  Imperial  Library,  and  relieved 
him  of  his  duties  in  the  College  de  France. 
No  reasons  were  given.  But  every  one  recog- 
nized that,  after  the  Vie  de  Jesus  had  taken 
its  place  among  European  books  as  an  event  of 
the  first  magnitude,  its  author  could  not  hope 
to  escape  reprisals  in  a  country  where,  as  he 
said,  all  questions  ran  into  politics.  Until  the 
Second  Empire  fell,  Renan  was  in  opposition 
to   the   Government,   though  he   became   an 


136  Renan 

,  .  ■    ,  ■  -    I ■■       ■  *-..       , ■■■  - 

intimate  friend  of  some  among  the  Bonapartes. 
He  greatly  admired  Prince  Jerome  Napoleon  ; 
he  was  on  familiar  terms,  as  a  frequent  guest, 
with  the  Princess  Mathilde,  whose  genius  he 
rated  very  high,  and  whose  drawing-room  at 
St.  Gratien  was  a  centre  of  artistic  and  literary 
meetings.  Before  1863  Renan  might  have 
claimed  the  reputation  of  a  scholar  among 
scholars ;  the  French  public  did  not  know 
him.  From  that  climacteric  year  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  which  proved,  thanks  to 
the  Mexican  adventure,  to  be  a  fatal  one 
for  the  House  of  Bonaparte,  his  renown 
went  on  increasing. 

He  was  just  turned  forty.  His  character 
had  not  lost  its  firmness ;  he  meditated 
volumes  more  solid  and  erudite  than  the 
unsubstantial  romance  by  which  he  had 
achieved  a  doubtful  fame  as  the  Celsus  of  a 
new  Paganism,  loftily  patronizing  what  be- 
lievers adored.  Antiquity  was  his  subject, 
sunshine  his  element.  On  his  first  expedi- 
tion to  Palestine  he  went  as  a  poet ;  from  his 
second  he  came  back  an  historian,  always 
indeed  mixing  his  own  dreams  with  realities, 


In  St.  Paul's  Footsteps      137 

but  writing  over  again  the  Roman  annals 
where  they  touched  the  Christian  in  a  style  no 
less  delicate  than  persuasive.  Yet  on  these 
delightful  undertakings  events  of  the  darkest 
tragedy  were  to  cast  their  shadow. 

From  Alexandria,  which  he  found  "  dirty, 
hideous,  vulgar,  disgusting  in  its  immorality, 
baseness,  and  deformity,"  Renan  wrote  in 
November  1864  to  Berthelot  that  he  was  on 
his  way  to  Cairo  and  the  Pyramids.  All  he 
intended  was  a  flying  visit ;  but  M.  Mariette, 
who  directed  the  French  excavations — a  man 
of  rare  charm  and  scholarship — led  him  along 
the  Nile  for  five  hundred  miles,  as  far  as  the 
First  Cataract.  He  suffered  a  little  from 
sunstroke  at  Thebes,  but  was  otherwise  in 
excellent  health  and  spirits,  eager  to  sec  every- 
thing like  an  indefatigable  tourist,  and  sending 
to  the  Journal  des  Debats  an  account  of  it 
all,    which  is  still  pleasant  reading. 

He  was  infinitely  curious  about  the  ancient 
world.  Its  greatness  never  failed  to  carry 
him  away ;  for,  like  Newman,  he  did  not 
believe  it  had  been  surpassed  by  later  civili- 
sations.    Henceforth,     more    than     ever,    his 


138  Renan 

tone  is  that  of  a  Greek,  nay,  an  Athenian 
who  composes  in  French  because  the  Attic 
idiom  would  find  no  readers,  and  who  among 
his  modern  acquaintance  is  a  survival  from 
the  age  of  Pericles.  Well  as  he  understood 
Hebrew,  the  attitude  in  which  he  drew  nigh 
to  Prophet  or  Apostle  was  by  no  means  sym- 
pathetic. Their  burning  enthusiasm  repelled 
him  ;  so  vehement  a  style  he  could  not  away 
with ;  he  thought  them  even  a  little  wanting 
in  good  manners.  Such  was  the  frame  of 
mind  in  which  Renan  set  forth  to  trace  the 
life  and  journeyings  of  St.  Paul. 

Madame  Renan  went  with  her  husband,  who 
could  not  bear  to  travel  by  himself.  The 
children,  Ary  and  Noemi,  were  left  at  home. 
From  Beyrout,  in  a  January  which  might  have 
been  April,  the  pilgrims  rode  through  anemones 
and  cyclamens  on  their  "  sweet  sad  expedition  " 
to  Amschit,  where  Henriette  lay  buried.  They 
were  welcomed  by  patriarch  and  people  with 
open  arms. 

The  tomb  was  on  a  slope  of  Lebanon, 
between  two  valleys  from  which  the  sea  was 
visible,  and  the  port  of  Byblos,  encumbered 


In  St.  PauPs  Footsteps     139 


with  ruins,  towards  the  suuth.  All  round  about 
flourished  vines,  olive-groves,  and  palms,  while 
the  mountains  which  closed  in  the  horizon 
were  covered  with  snow.  Rcnan  had  thought 
of  giving  his  beloved  sister  a  separate  grave  and 
of  raising  a  monument  over  it.  But  Zakhia  the 
Maronite  pleaded  hard  that  she  might  rest  in 
the  sepulchre  of  his  family,  and  so  it  was  deter- 
mined. In  the  chapel  not  far  off,  at  Renan's 
petition,  Mass  was  celebrated  according  to  that 
ancient  Syrian  rite,  the  whole  village  joining 
in.  "  This  for  me  is  now  holy  ground,"  he 
wrote  to  Berthelot ;  "  I  shall  come  back  again  ; 
I  have  left  there  one  of  the  best  parts  of  my- 
self." Only  those  who  compare  the  Epicurean 
of  his  latter  years  with  Henriette's  brother  as 
he  was  during  her  lifetime,  will  measure  how 
truly  he  spoke. 

Damascus,  "  melancholy  and  sombre,"  was 
the  next  stage.  "  I  have  fixed  my  horizon," 
he  wrote  again  to  his  friend  in  Paris,  "  for  the 
scene  of  St.  Paul's  conversion.  It  came  to 
pass  in  a  great  cultivated  plain,  perhaps  in  the 
midst  of  gardens.  We  must  certainly  put 
aside  the  notion  of  an  outward  accident ;    the 


140  Renan 

whole  thing  took  place  in  the  man  himself." 
Berthelot  had  informed  him  of  an  event 
which  was  then  hotly  discussed — the  publica- 
tion by  Pius  IX  of  his  Encyclical  Quanta  Cura, 
with  its  appended  Syllabus,  in  which  the 
author  of  the  famous  Life  had  his  own  portion. 
Kenan's  observations  in  reply,  dated  from 
Alexandretta,  January  22,  1865,  make  so 
highly  significant  a  forecast  of  things  which 
have  since  fallen  out,  or  which  seem  likely 
to  happen,  that  it  deserves  to  be  quoted. 
He  predicts  a  strong  Galilean  reaction  sup- 
ported by  the  State  ;  but  a  national  Church 
in  France  could  never  live  happily,  for  it 
would  be  worse  than  the  present  situation. 
A  schism  was  inevitable,  not  external,  but 
within  the  Church  itself.  "  In  three  or  four 
years  the  Galilean  party  of  Darboy,  etc.,  will 
cease  to  exist."  This,  we  may  remark,  came 
about  after  1870  and  the  Vatican  Council. 
Renan  continues,  "  There  will  be  two  factions 
of  Catholics  enraged  against  each  other,  one 
wild  with  reaction,  the  other  entangled  in  a 
network  of  changes,  and  really  Protestant.  At 
last   the    State   will   draw   itself   out   of   these 


In  St.  PauPs  Footsteps     141 

disputes,  and  separation  will  take  place.  But 
all  that  will  bring  about  strange  troubles 
(dechirements),  which  will  occupy  the  end  of 
this  century."  Renan  was  by  no  means 
always  a  true  prophet ;  but  the  man  who  set 
down  these  lines  forty  years  ago  had  the  gift 
of  vision. 

To  Antioch  they  went  in  fair  weather — a 
difHcult  journey  ;  thence  by  sea  to  Athens, 
where  the  travellers  arrived  in  February  1865. 
This  was  a  culminating  moment  in  Renan's 
life.  He  saw  now  "  the  absolute  perfection 
of  the  Greek  ideals,"  and  he  felt  dazzled 
by  their  profound,  their  infinite  charm.  He 
could  not  tear  himself  away  from  the  Acro- 
polis ;  Athena  became  to  him  the  symbol  of 
beauty,  intellect,  wisdom ;  and  he  poured 
forth  his  prayer  in  ecstatic  smiling  dithyrambs 
to  his  Greek  Madonna,  with  a  fervour  that 
would  have  touched  Sophocles.  The  lovely 
Erechtheum  wins  his  admiration  at  once  ;  but 
he  comes  only  by  degrees  to  understand 
how  great,  how  majestic,  is  the  Parthenon. 
In  a  vivid  page  he  groups  the  monuments, 
and   then   continues,  "  The  spirit  of  all  that 


142  Renan 

has  been  excellently  rendered  by  Michelet. 
His  Athens  is  perfectly  right.  The  incom- 
parable superiority  of  the  Greek  world,  the 
true  and  simple  grandeur  of  all  it  has  left 
behind,  that  is  what  strikes  one  on  every  side. 
There  are  the  real  '  great  men,'  and  I  am  less 
attentive  to  the  want  of  literary  talent  in  a 
certain  preface  " — which  Napoleon  III  had 
just  then  published  to  his  fragment  on  Julius 
Caesar — "  than  to  the  limited  horizon  which 
prevents  its  author  from  seeing  beyond  the 
Roman  world.  That,  by  the  bye,  is  a  French 
peculiarity.  France  can  never  travel  farther 
than  Rome.  Whatever  it  has  attempted  in 
the  guise  of  Hellenic  art  has  always  been 
Roman." 

The  longer  Syrian  exploration  had  to  be 
given  up.  From  Athens  to  Smyrna  is  a  short 
and  not  unpleasant  voyage,  which  after  six 
weeks  in  Attica  Renan  undertook.  He  went 
by  rail  to  Ephesus,  and  then  "  plunged,"  as  he 
said,  into  Asia  Minor,  in  quest  of  the  Apostolic 
Churches.  It  was  a  hazardous  thing  to  do, 
but  the  fine-toned  landscapes  which  adorn  his 
5/.  Paul^  especially  those  of  the  Lycian  interior. 


In  St,  PauPs  Footsteps     143 

rewarded  him  and  his  brave  companion  for 
their  fatigues.  He  attempted,  on  his  home- 
ward journey,  to  reach  the  harbour  of  Patmos 
from  Scala  Nova  ;  winds  and  waves  did 
battle  against  him,  and,  after  tossing  about 
for  fifty-two  hours  on  rough  waters,  he 
was  compelled  to  turn  back. 

At  Smyrna  we  find  our  travellers  once 
more,  on  May  6,  1865,  bound  for  Athens  a 
second  time.  They  saw  Mycenae,  Tiryns, 
Corinth  ;  embarked  for  Salonica  ;  traversed 
Macedonia  during  a  favourable  season  ;  and 
ended  at  Constantinople  a  series  of  expeditions 
which  would  have  done  credit  to  Layard  or 
Burton.  What  Renan  said  in  disparagement 
of  Stamboul,  much  as  he  admired  Saint  Sophia 
and  the  picturesque  of  sea  and  shore,  is  worth 
reading.  Fresh  from  the  glories  of  Athens,  he 
could  not  bear  the  city  which  Constantine  set 
up  *'  to  be  the  everlasting  capita]  of  intrigue 
and  baseness."  He  would  never  come  there 
again. 

On  this  word  his  correspondence  with 
Berthelot  breaks  off  until  the  eve  of  1870, 
although    we    possess     long    and    interesting 


144  Ren  an 

letters  written  to  him  by  the  now  illustrious 
chemist  who,  in  October  1869,  accompanied 
the  Empress  Eugenie,  when  she  went  to 
Egypt  for  the  opening  of  that  new  waterway 
between  East  and  West,  the  Suez  Canal. 

But  our  concern  is  with  Renan  the  historian. 
Les  Apotres  came  out  in  1866,  St.  Paul  in  1869  ' 
and  these  form  a  connected  narrative  which 
has  a  unity  of  its  own.  To  Les  A-potres  was 
prefixed  one  of  those  fascinating  but  super- 
ficial prologues  wherein  the  writer  discoursed 
pleasantly  of  himself,  his  authorities,  and 
things  in  general.  It  is  a  very  pretty  piece, 
sparkling  with  irony,  gracious  to  the  "  good 
Luke,"  whose  Gospel  and  Acts  had  been  too 
mucli  undervalued,  and  eloquent  on  the 
claims  of  religious  peace,  which  could  always 
be  secured  by  giving  up  a  little  more  dogma. 
During  the  stormy  scenes  of  the  French 
National  Assembly  there  was  an  incident, 
tragi-comic  and  quite  without  consequence, 
known  as  "  le  baiser  de  Lamourette,"  which 
Carlyle  translates  as  "  the  Delilah  kiss."  We 
are  put  in  mind  of  it  when  M.  Renan, 
whose     deity     is     in     the     making,    entreats 


hi  St.  PatiPs  Footsteps     145 

Christians   of    every   colour    to    defend  their 
interests  hj  sacrificing  all  their  principles. 

From  a  spirit  so  curiously  insensible  to 
the  real  issue,  we  shall  not  look  for  any 
treatment  of  the  Resurrection  more  profound 
than  the  despised  eighteenth  century  had 
bequeathed  to  him.  Renan's  language  is 
tender,  nay,  unctuous — we  cannot  escape  the 
recurring  epithet — but  he  alternates,  like  a  son 
of  the  Jufkldrung,  between  theories  of  impos- 
ture and  theories  of  expectant  delusion.  He 
will  not  accept  the  witness,  as  it  has  been 
called,  of  the  empty  tomb  ;  he  declines  the 
force  of  St.  Paul's  spiritual  experience.  When 
he  needs  delusion,  he  summons  up  Mary 
Magdalene,  "  queen  and  patroness  of  idealists," 
by  whose  dream  on  Easter  morning  the 
world  has  won  its  vision  of  joy.  But  im- 
posture claims  its  turn  ;  "  quelque  petite 
supercherie,"  some  trifling  act  of  trickery, 
some  pious  fraud,  must  have  taken  place 
on  the  part  of  disciples  unknown,  who 
were  certainly  not  victims  of  hallucina- 
tion. Let  us  not  look  too  narrowly  into  the 
facts,  he   says,   any   more   than  we   did  when 

10 


146  Renan 

the  mighty  works  of  Christ  were  in  question. 
Only  by  such  ambiguous  means  can  a  religion 
be  founded ;  not  by  clean-handed  philosophers, 
but  by  men  and  women  of  the  people,  who 
create  the  gods  before  which  they  afterwards 
fall  down  in  worship. 

So  much  for  the  "  empty  tomb."  What, 
we  ask,  on  leaving  this  cloud-land  of  illusion, 
extravagance,  and  fever-dreams,  are  we  to  make 
of  St.  Paul,  who  cannot  have  cherished  antici- 
pations about  Jesus,  for  he  never  set  eyes  on 
Him  in  the  flesh,  and  who  breathed  out 
threatenings  and  slaughter  against  His  fol- 
lowers ?  Can  St.  Paul  be  explained  away 
under  a  psychological  rubric  borrowed  from 
physicians  ? 

Renan  does  not  like  to  be  cross-examined 
in  so  rude  a  fashion.  By  judicious  mingling 
of  times  and  seasons,  by  reading  back  into 
the  Pharisee  that  which  the  Apostle  has  told 
us  of  his  later  ecstasies,  by  supposing  him 
to  have  been  a  neurotic  subject  from  his 
youth  up,  and  by  comparing  this  sudden 
change,  effected  without  visible  antecedents, 
to  Lamennais'  apostasy,  which  took  years  to 


In  St.  PauPs  Footsteps     147 


accomplish,  the  story-teller  gets  rid  of  a 
miracle  that  in  its  circumstances  was  no  less 
beyond  what  we  have  learned  about  the  laws 
of  Nature  than  was  the  Resurrection  itself. 
Any  incident,  he  assures  us,  will  suffice  when 
we  can  take  refuge  in  psychology — a  thunder- 
storm, the  noonday  heat,  the  coming  on  of 
a  fever  such  as  Renan  had  himself  experienced 
at  Amschit.  That  nothing  of  the  kind  is 
mentioned  by  St.  Paul  or  in  the  Acts  can 
make  no  difference.  Revelation  not  being 
admissible,  hallucination  is  the  only  key  to  a 
portent  of  which  the  witness  may  not  be  set 
down  as  a  deliberate  impostor. 

Yet,  as  is  well  known,  Ferdinand  Christian 
Baur  could  never  feel  satisfied  that  this  was 
the  true  account  of  Saul's  conversion.  The 
Apostle,  who  told  his  own  story  again  and 
again,  had  but  one  explanation,  from  which 
he  did  not  draw  back  in  any  presence.  But 
to  allow  it,  Renan  must  have  accepted  the 
existence  of  a  spiritual  unseen  world  encom- 
passing the  world  in  which  we  live  and  move. 
That  was  impossible.  He  could  never  grant 
that    an    intellect  superior  to  the  human  was 


148  Re?2an 

extant  in  the  universe,  or  that  death  of  the 
body  did  not  involve  extinction  of  the  spirit. 
His  great  first  principle,  which  admitted  only  of 
"  phenomena,"  and  was  identical  with  Comte's, 
carried  with  it  these  consequences.  To  a 
deeper  science  they  appear  singularly  inade- 
quate, and  even  incredible,  as  they  arc  surely 
destructive  of  all  that  mankind  has  cherished 
under  the  name  of  religion. 

These  defects,  which  for  ever  divide  Renan 
from  the  company  of  spiritual  seers  in  whose 
light  humanity  lives,  must  not  blind  us  to  his 
merits  as  an  artist,  a  scholar,  and  an  historian. 
The  insatiable  curiosity  of  a  spirit  untamed 
was  learning  to  concentrate  its  powers  on  one 
subject,  enough  for  a  lifetime,  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  Roman  Empire  into  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church.  During  eighteen  years 
Renan  was  intent  on  this  great  epic,  which  he 
viewed  in  all  its  stages  and  at  every  centre 
where  it  had  left  a  record.  In  dedicating 
St.  Paul  to  his  wife,  Cornelie,  he  says,  "  We 
have  seen  together  Ephesus  and  Antioch, 
Philippi  and  Thessalonica,  Athens  and  Corinth, 
Colossae     and    Laodicaea.  ...    At     Seleucia, 


In  St,  PauPs  Footsteps     149 

standing  on  the  disjointed  stones  of  its  ancient 
mole,  wc  felt  a  little  envious  of  the  Apostles, 
who  there  set  sail  to  conquer  the  world,  full 
of  a  burning  faith  in  the  Kingdom  of  God." 
He  was  already  familiar  with  Rome,  to 
which  those  hopes  and  fears  had  all  converged. 
He  lived  day  by  day  among  the  reminiscences 
of  antiquity.  His  own  large  reading,  the  con- 
sultation of  experts  in  Eastern  lore,  and  the 
insight  which  his  Catholic  bringing  up  had 
given  him  into  the  circumstances  that  call 
forth  new  religious  associations,  fitted  him 
admirably  for  some  part  of  his  task.  Unlike 
Gibbon,  he  is  reverent  in  dealing  with  Saints 
and  Martyrs  ;  but  he  cannot,  like  Gibbon, 
draw  a  strong  and  lively  picture  in  a  few 
firm  strokes.  His  descriptions  are  pictur- 
esque ;  his  personages,  on  the  other  hand, 
leave  us  uncertain  whether  we  should  know 
them  if  they  suddenly  came  before  us. 
In  grasping  the  moral  and  social  causes 
to  which  Christianity  owed  its  triumph, 
he  is  far  more  successful.  Yet,  even  here, 
when  he  traces  the  decline  of  Paganism, 
especially  among  the  Greeks,  he  might  have 


150  Renan 

borrowed  with  advantage  from  Plutarch  and 
Pausanias  details,  both  light  and  sombre, 
which  would  have  added  to  the  somewhat  low 
relief  of  too  abstract  a  style. 

Always  by  preference  classic,  and  even,  one 
may  say,  Catholic,  as  opposed  to  the  Protestant 
of  a  fierce  controversial  type,  Renan,  who 
looked  upon  St.  Paul  as  the  father  of  Luther 
and  Calvin,  as  a  Hebrew  in  his  very  revolt 
from  what  was  afterwards  the  Talmud,  and  as 
a  theologian  who  justified  the  whole  scheme 
of  sin  and  redemption,  could  not  forbear  to 
exhibit  the  great  Apostle  in  a  crude  light. 

St.  Paul's  outward  and  inward  man  are  to 
this  worshipper  of  Apollo  equally  displeasing, 
and  on  the  same  ground,  their  lack  of  beauti- 
ful form.  Trusting  to  late  works,  for  instance, 
the  Philopatris,  the  writer  indulges  himself  in 
a  caricature  which  might  very  well  describe 
Thersites,  but  is  surely  not  worthy  of  a  place 
in  history.  We  know  better  how  to  judge  of 
a  style  which  is  not  apocryphal  like  this 
fancied  portrait,  but  which  lies  open  to  our 
view  in  St.  Paul's  Epistles.  It  is,  we  grant, 
neither  Attic  nor  Ionic  ;  yet  it  is  endowed  with 


In  St.  Paul's  Footsteps     151 

energy  so  astonishing  that  for  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  it  has  borne  to  be  read  in  all  the 
churches  without  losing  any  of   its  power. 

Renan,  who  detested  writing  letters,  al- 
lowed to  St.  Paul  this  inferior  kind  of  com- 
position ;  it  "  suited  his  feverish  activity,  his 
need  of  expressing  in  a  moment  what  he  felt." 
And  the  critic  sums  him  up,  "  Lively,  rude, 
polished,  mischievous,  sarcastic,  then  all  at  once 
tender,  delicate,  almost  pretty  and  coaxing, 
with  phrases  happy  and  subtle  in  a  high  de- 
gree, toning  down  his  manner  with  reticences, 
reservations,  infinite  safeguards,  sly  allusions, 
cloaked  ironies,  he  could  not  but  excel  in  a 
manner  which  is,  before  all  things,  spontaneous. 
The  epistolary  turn  of  St.  Paul  is  the  most 
individual  that  ever  was.  His  language,  so  to 
speak,  is  brayed  in  a  mortar  ;  no  two  sentences 
follow  in  succession.  It  would  be  impossible 
for  any  one  to  set  aside  more  boldly  the  logic, 
I  do  not  say  of  Greek,  but  of  human  speech 
altogether.  We  might  call  it  a  rapid  conver- 
sation taken  down  in  shorthand,  then  repeated 
without  corrections." 

But    in    spite    of    his    marvellously   ardent 


152  Renan 

spirit,  the  Apostle  has  no  great  store  of 
phrases.  "  A  single  word  haunts  him  "  ;  he 
will  come  back  to  it  in  season  and  out  of 
season  for  a  whole  page  ;  "  not  that  his  mind 
is  barren,  it  is  only  troubled  ;  he  never  thinks 
a  second  time  about  style."  Hence,  con- 
cludes Renan,  his  Epistles,  though  strikingly 
original,  have  no  charm.  Nevertheless,  a 
judge  as  competent  as  the  French  critic,  we 
mean  Cardinal  Newman,  dwells  on  St.  Paul's 
"  gift  of  sympathy,"  and  goes  so  far  as  to 
call  him,  "  this  sweetest  of  inspired  writers, 
this  most  touching  and  winning  of  teachers." 
Such,  too,  was  the  opinion  of  St.  John 
Chrysostom,  who,  as  a  Syrian  and  a  Greek 
orator,  was  pecuHarly  intimate  with  the 
Pauline  temperament. 

Not,  then,  a  great  artist,  according  to  Renan, 
the  Apostle  is  likewise  not  a  learned  Hellene ; 
nor  a  mystic,  although  rapt  to  the  third 
Heaven  ;  nor  is  he  eminently  a  saint.  He 
stands  far  behind  the  "  friends  of  Jesus,"  who 
founded  the  Christian  tradition  and  wrote  the 
Gospels.  He  is  the  man  of  action,  the  con- 
quering missionary,  "  fierce,  harsh,  difficult," 


In  St.  PaiiFs  Footsteps      153 


abounding  in  dogmas  and  formulas,  not  in 
gracious  parables  like  the  divine  Master  ;  his 
very  faith  is  a  struggle.  But  he  had  the  genius 
to  discern  that,  if  ever  men  embraced  a  univer- 
sal religion,  it  would  not  be  one  in  which  the 
rites  and  ceremonies  of  Judaism  were  made 
obligatory  on  all  nations.  How  different  from 
Mohammed,  whose  disciples  cannot  live  out- 
side certain  degrees  of  latitude,  and  whose 
teaching  everywhere  betrays  the  influence  of 
Arab  customs  and  the  desert  ?  St.  Paul,  in 
this  view,  is  the  second  founder  of  Christianity  ; 
when  he  pursues  the  track  of  Jewish  propa- 
ganda from  synagogue  to  synagogue  along  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  he  is  fulfilling 
the  ancient  prophecies  that  made  of  Israel  an 
apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  He  did  more  than 
write  the  first  chapter  of  dogmatic  theology  in 
his  Roman  Letter  ;  he  taught  the  West  how  it 
might  be  Christian,  yet  escape  from  the  yoke 
of  a  foreign  law  ;  and  by  so  doing  he  substi- 
tuted Rome  for  Jerusalem,  the  Vatican  for 
Mount  Zian,  as  "  the  mountain  of  the  Lord, 
the  house  of  the  God  of  Jacob." 

To  travel  with  St.  Paul  on  his  missionary 


154  Renan 

voyages  has  been  a  favourite  occupation  in 
modern  books.  We  cannot  undertake,  as 
Renan  did,  to  visit  those  ruined  cities  :  An- 
tioch,  with  its  amphitheatre  of  hills  ;  the 
valley  of  the  Lycus  or  the  Maeander  ;  Ephesus, 
the  shrine  of  Artemis ;  Alexandria  Troas,  or 
Philippi,  standing  out  boldly  in  its  fruitful 
plain.  Paul  before  the  Areopagus  offers  to 
our  view  a  contrast  to  which  only  Paul  in  the 
presence  of  Nero  may  suggest  a  parallel. 
These  are  two  moments  in  history  when  the 
drama  of  a  world's  fate  is  shown  openly  on  the 
stage.  But  Renan  is  not  to  be  captivated  by 
that  exquisite  pleading  in  the  seventeenth  of 
Acts  on  behalf  of  the  "  unknown  God,"  whose 
revelation  was  at  hand.  All  he  can  perceive 
is  a  "  small  ugly  Jew "  decreeing  that  the 
marble  gods  and  their  temples  thall  pass  away  ; 
an  "  iconoclast  "  whose  eyes  are  shut  to  the 
beauty  which  he  condemns,  and  who  takes 
Athena  for  an  idol. 

The  artist  in  Renan  cries  out  with  tears 
against  that  sacrilege.  Yet  he  was  aware,  for 
he  had  read  Aristophanes,  that  no  degree  of 
culture,  however  finely  expressed,  no  statues 


In  St.  PauVs  Footsteps     155 

or  poems,  though  supremely  fair,  could  save 
the  Athenians  from  unspeakable  degradation. 
St.  Paul  knew  it  better  than  he,  not  by 
studying  antique  remains  on  the  spot  or  in 
dead  museums,  but  by  an  experience  which 
daily  and  hourly  came  before  his  eyes  in 
every  city  of  that  corrupt  world.  Culture, 
says  our  critic,  was  unable  to  believe  in  the 
Resurrection.  Nevertheless,  he  observes,  in 
the  discourse  of  St.  Paul  on  the  Hill  of  Mars, 
we  are  witnessing  a  first  attempt  to  reconcile 
the  supernatural  with  science,  to  translate 
Christian  and  Jewish  thought  into  Greek  ; 
Clement  of  Alexandria  and  Origen  were  to 
follow  the  example  by  and  by.  But  the 
reconciliation  would  never  find  its  opportunity 
in  Athens. 

The  school  of  Tubingen  had  always  attracted 
Renan  by  its  dissolving  criticism  ;  it  repelled 
him,  for  he  was  French  and  moderate  in 
temper,  by  what  he  considered  its  extrava- 
gance. From  it  he  borrowed  lavishly  in  treat- 
ing of  the  dissensions  which  broke  out  between 
St.  Paul  and  his  Jewish  brethren,  as  recorded 
in  the  Acts  and  the  Epistles,  but  he  declined  to 


156  Renan 

go  the  whole  way.  He,  too,  made  much  of  the 
pseudo-Clementine  literature,  which  is  Ebio- 
nite,  Petrine,  and  zealous  for  the  rights  of 
Jerusalem.  He  was  willing  to  identify  St.  Paul 
with  Simon  Magus,  whom,  in  those  polemical 
fictions,  St.  Peter  follows  everywhere  and 
denounces  as  the  "  enemy  "  or  the  Antichrist. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  St.  Luke  he  recognized  a 
disciple  and  apologist  of  St.  Paul ;  and  he  was 
reluctant  to  deny  the  historical  value  of  that 
passage  in  itself  so  remarkable,  which  brings 
together  St,  Peter  and  the  Roman  Cornelius, 
and  thus  affords  a  meeting  ground  for  the 
tolerant  practices  of  both  Apostles. 

In  like  manner  he  would  now  be  termed 
conservative  as  regards  the  Pauline  writings, 
which  he  divides  into  three  classes,  rejecting 
only  those  to  Timothy  and  Titus,  while 
assigning  to  some  unknown  hand  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  perhaps  to  Barnabas.  He 
addressed  a  warning  in  sharp  language  to  the 
pedants  who  have  determined  a  priori  how 
the  Apostle  must  have  written.  And  he 
added,  not  unfairly,  that  German  professors 
wrangling  among   themselves   in   lecture  and 


ht  St.  PaiiPs  Footsteps      157 


dissertation,  were  the  last  who  would  be 
likely  to  understand  how  a  popular  religion 
had  begun.  In  his  view,  therefore,  no  such 
complete  antagonism  existed,  even  between 
St.  Paul  and  the  party  of  legal  zealots 
represented  by  St.  James,  as  would  hinder 
them  from  sharing  in  the  common  effort 
to  spread  their  faith.  He  was  thus  not  very 
far  off,  when  we  consider  his  principles,  from 
the  orthodox  position  which  has  combined  in 
the  same  New  Testament  Paul  and  James  and 
John,  the  Apocalypse  and  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  as  chapters  which  make  up  severally 
the  one  Divine  message. 

But  nothing  would  induce  him  to  like  St. 
Paul.  "  After  having  been  for  three  hundred 
years,  thanks  to  Protestantism,  the  Christian 
doctor  far  excellence^  Paul  is  now  coming  to  an 
end  of  his  reign."  So  the  volume  concludes  ; 
and  Matthew  Arnold's  comment  may  follow  : 
"  All  through  his  book  M.  Renan  is  possessed 
with  a  sense  of  this  close  relationship  between 
St.  Paul  and  Protestantism.  Protestantism  has 
made  Paul,  he  says  ;  Pauline  doctrine  is  identi- 
fied with  Protestant  doctrine  ;    Paul  is  a  Pro- 


158  Renan 

testant  doctor,  and  the  counterpart  of  Luther. 
M.  Renan  has  a  strong  distaste  for  Protestant- 
ism, and  this  distaste  extends  itself  to  the 
Protestant  Paul.  The  reign  of  this  Protestant 
is  now  coming  to  an  end,  and  such  a  consum- 
mation evidently  has  M.  Kenan's  approval." 

It  had  undoubtedly.  Much  as  the  free- 
thinking  Herder  at  one  time  drew  the  student's 
admiration  (who  knew  little  about  him  except 
his  free- thought),  towards  real  Protestants, 
orthodox  or  liberal,  he  felt  something  like 
aversion.  "  I  am  often  asked  by  German 
Christians,"  he  said  in  a  phrase  which  was 
clamorously  taken  up,  "  what  do  I  make  of 
sin  ?  Mon  Dieu,  I  believe  that  I  suppress  it." 
A  brilliant  epigram  ;  but  even  in  his  liveliest 
days  Renan  had  seen  the  writing  on  the  wall 
which  told  France  that  its  sin  would  find  it  out. 
In  the  preface  to  St,  Paul  these  words  stand  on 
record,  "  Our  youthful  age  saw  melancholy 
times ;  and  I  dread  lest  Fate  should  show  us 
no  good  before  we  die.  Some  enormous  mis- 
takes are  driving  our  country  into  the  abyss  ; 
when  we  point  them  out  we  are  met  with 
smiles."     His  Questions  Contemporaines,  pub- 


In  St.  PauPs  Footsteps     159 


lished  in  1868,  holds  the  warning,  strongly  and 
almost  passionately  uttered,  to  which  these 
forebodings  allude.  It  was  an  indictment  of 
the  French  Revolution,  no  less  emphatic  than 
Edmund  Burke's,  and  so  much  better  warranted 
that  a  succession  of  calamities  had  set  on  it 
their  seal. 

One  passage  became  immediately  the  war 
cry  of  all  those  who  still  clung  to  the  alliance 
between  throne  and  altar.  It  spoke  of  the 
Revolution  as  an  experiment  which  had  failed. 
Only  a  single  kind  of  inequality  was  left, 
that  of  fortune,  in  a  State  which  took  to  it- 
self all  things  else  ;  which  created  an  intel- 
lectual desert  for  the  sake  of  Paris ;  which  de- 
graded social  service  into  mere  administration  ; 
which  put  an  end  to  the  growth  of  colonies  ; 
and  which  could  not  be  sure  of  the  future. 
Bankruptcy  was  inevitable  with  a  code  of  laws 
"  that  seemed  to  have  been  made  for  a  citizen 
committed  to  the  foundling  hospital  at  birth 
and  dying  a  bachelor  "  ;  laws  that  made  every 
collective  and  enduring  work  impossible  ;  that 
divided  the  father  from  his  children,  the  hus- 
band from  his  wife  ;  and  that,  instead  of  giving 


i6o  Renan 

property  a  moral  value,  turned  it  into  the 
symbol  of  sensuous  enjoyment.  What  could 
such  laws  bring  forth  but  a  world  of  pygmies 
and  rebels  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  said  Renan,  look  at 
Prussia.  There  philosophy,  government,  char- 
acter were  joined  in  a  public  task  ;  a  great 
Germany,  wise  and  liberal,  was  coming  to 
the  birth.  Let  France  not  attempt  a  military 
organization  like  the  Prussian,  unless  it  was 
prepared  to  adopt  the  moral  training  on  which 
that  system  was  founded.  German  science, 
German  universities,  the  German  method  of 
handling  religion,  these  were  prerequisites  to 
a  German  army.  For  such  a  people  victory 
would  be  assured.  But  "  in  the  fatal  round  of 
revolutions,  deep  calleth  unto  deep.  Examples 
may  be  cited  of  nations  which,  having  gone 
down  into  that  hell  of  Dante,  have  come  out 
again  alive.  What  shall  we  say  of  the  nation 
that  has  escaped  from  it  and  yet  will  plunge  in- 
to it  once  more,  nay  even,  twice  and  thrice  ?  " 


Chapter   VI 

PARIS   AND   JERUSALEM 

DESTINY,  which  is  Providence  judging 
the  world,  was  not  long  in  giving  the 
answer.  A  Liberal  Opposition  had 
taken  to  driving  the  chariot  of  the  sun,  while 
Phoebus-Napoleon  slept.  "  Dormira  sem- 
pre,"  said  Renan,  who  in  May  1869,  ^'^^  ^^^ 
short  instant,  fancied  that  he  had  a  call  to 
political  action.  He  put  out  his  manifesto  in 
big  letters  on  the  walls  of  many  villages,  ad- 
dressing the  district  of  Meaux  in  philosophic 
terms.  "  No  revolution  !  "  he  cried.  "  No  war  ! 
A  war  would  be  as  great  a  disaster  as  revolution." 
He  was  for  peace,  retrenchment  and  reform. 
But  Cassandra  did  not  get  elected.  The  clerical 
influence  on  one  side,  the  Jacobin  on  another, 
were  dead  against  a  man  whose  party,  if  it  could 
be  said  anywhere  to  exist,  had  no  command 
over  the  multitude.     As  on  a  previous  occasion, 


1 6  2  Re?ian 

he  found  solace  for  his  defeat  in  travelling. 
Prince  Napoleon  took  him  in  the  summer  of 
1870  on  an  expedition  to  the  Arctic  Circle. 
He  paid  a  flying  visit  to  Inverness  and 
coasted  along  the  fiords  of  Norway.  There 
was  talk  of  sailing  to  Spitzbergen.  From 
Storen  near  Trondheim,  on  July  11,  Renan 
despatched  a  gay  letter  to  Berthelot,  full 
of  these  plans  and  projects.  At  Tromsoe, 
one  week  later,  a  telegram  informed  the  Prince 
that  war  with  Prussia  was  certain  and  immedi- 
ate. 

"  A  fit  of  madness,  an  absolute  crime," 
exclaimed  Renan  when  the  news  was  brought. 
But  the  crime  had  been  committed,  and 
the  travellers  hastened  back  to  France.  In 
his  pleasant  summer  home  at  Sevres  the 
disconcerted  idealist,  who  had  been  proposing 
a  reduction  of  the  French  army,  looked  on 
while  his  philosophers  from  beyond  the  Rhine 
proved  what  science  could  do  with  a  rifle 
on  its  shoulder.  His  unhappy  countrymen 
were  not  only  suffering  reverses  on  a  hun- 
dred battlefields ;  they  were  victims  of  the 
"  decomposition  of  society  "  against  which  he 


Paris  and  yerusalem      163 


had  raised  his  voice.  Did  he  and  his  Life  of 
Jesus  count  for  nothing  in  tliat  irretrievable 
disaster,  as  a  symptom,  if  not  as  a  cause  ? 
Years  afterwards,  in  the  Priest  of  Nemi^  one 
Ganeo  lays  down  the  philosophy  of  cowardice, 
which  sees  in  flight  the  chance  of  enjoyment 
to-morrow.  The  French  soldiers  fought,  in- 
deed, with  proverbial  courage  ;  but  they  had 
lost  religion  for  the  greater  part  ;  they  were 
wanting  in  stamina,  physical  and  mental  ;  their 
generals  were  victims  or  patrons  of  intrigue  ; 
the  ice  of  the  Beresina  broke  under  them,  and 
the  flood  carried  them  away. 

For  Renan  the  "  downfall  "  was  more  than 
a  public  misfortune,  however  anticipated  ;  it 
came  as  a  private  grief  to  him.  His  whole 
character  underwent  a  change  in  the  "  Terrible 
Year."  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  who  had  made 
his  acquaintance  at  the  literary  dinners  in  the 
Cafe  Brebant,  gives  us  a  description  of  the  man, 
dated  May  25,  1868,  before  these  things  came 
to  pass.  "  Called  on  Renan,"  he  writes,  "  the 
fourth  storey  in  Rue  Vanneau, — a  small  set  of 
rooms,  bourgeois  and  neat,  the  furniture  in 
green   plush,   heads   by   Ary   Scheffer  on   the 


164  Renan 

walls,  and  among  keepsakes  from  Dunkirk  the 
hand  of  a  woman  delicately  moulded.  Through 
an  open  door  the  library  is  visible,  shelves  in 
white  wood,  large  unbound  volumes  lying  in 
stacks  on  the  floor,  the  tools  of  learning, 
medieval  or  Eastern,  quartos  of  all  kinds,  a 
section  of  a  Japanese  dictionary,  and  on  a  small 
table  the  slumbering  proofs  of  St.  Paul.  Out  of 
the  two  windows  an  immense  prospect,  one  of 
those  forests  of  verdure  hidden  among  the 
walls  and  stones  of  Paris  ;  it  is  the  Pare  Gal- 
liera,  the  ocean  of  tree-tops  over  which  appear 
sacred  buildings,  domes,  bell-towers,  something 
of  the  pious  horizon  of  Rome.  The  man  him- 
self seems  always  more  charming  and  affection- 
ately polite.  He  is  the  pattern  of  moral  grace- 
fulness in  a  body  far  from  graceful  ;  the  apostle 
of  doubt  has  the  high  intellectual  good-nature 
of  a  priest  of  science." 

This  appreciation  does  not  go  deeper  than 
the  surface  ;  but  all  the  accounts  we  find  of 
Renan  bear  it  out.  In  a  universal  shipwreck, 
however,  to  be  amiable  is  no  great  help  ;  the 
apostle  of  doubt  was  torn  by  emotions  which 
set  in  fierce  antagonism  his  devotion  to  science 


Pa7'is  a7id  ye?'usa/em      \  6  5 


and  his  love  for  France.  Nor  can  the  latter 
be  doubted,  although  it  bore  little  resemblance 
to  Gambetta's  fury  and  was  rather  old-Breton 
than  new-democratic  in  its  colouring.  He 
would  have  rejoiced  at  a  conquest  of  Paris  by 
Herder  and  Goethe  ;  in  Bismarck  and  the  Red 
Prince  he  could  discern  simply  the  Barbarians. 
He  was  unjust — pardonably  in  so  sudden  and 
frightful  a  storm  of  war  ;  but  those  who  have 
lingered  among  the  ruins  of  the  Castle  at 
Heidelberg,  and  who  remember  what  Louis 
XIV  made  of  the  Palatinate,  will  be  thankful 
that  no  French  soldiers  crossed  the  Rhine  in 
1870.  Renan  tells  us,  without  a  blush,  that  if 
he  had  been  ever  compelled  to  enlist  he  should 
have  deserted.  When  he  saw  the  troops 
marching  out  in  August  1870  along  the  Boule- 
vards he  despised  them.  "^Not  a  man  there," 
he  said,  "  is  capable  of  a  virtuous  act."  He 
was  for  peace  at  almost  any  price.  In  Septem- 
ber 1870  his  letter  to  David  Strauss  pleaded, 
however,  against  the  violent  seizure  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine,  without  regard  to  the  will  of  the 
inhabitants.  Not  race,  but  history,  made  a 
nation.     He  reminded  his  German  friends  that 


1 66  R 


ena7i 


Russia  was  the  coming  danger.  Strauss  trans- 
lated this  eloquent  epistle,  bound  it  up  with 
his  own  reply,  and  sold  it  for  the  benefit  of  the 
German  wounded.  Renan  could  not  help  ex- 
pending a  little  irony  on  this  performance 
when  it  came  to  his  ears.  "  Heaven  forbid," 
he  said  smiling,  "  that  I  should  quarrel  with 
you  over  a  point  of  copyright.  The  work 
for  which  you  lay  me  under  contribution  is  a 
work  of  humanity  ;  and  if  my  humble  prose  has 
purchased  a  few  cigars  for  the  men  that  plun- 
dered my  cottage  at  Sevres,  I  thank  you  for  the 
opportunity  you  have  given  me  of  obeying 
some  precepts  of  Jesus  which  I  believe  to  be 
quite  genuine.  But  remark  certain  slight  dif- 
ferences. Had  you  permitted  me  to  publish 
one  of  your  writings,  never,  oh  never,  should  I 
have  thought  of  selling  it  on  behalf  of  our  Hotel 
des  Invalides.  Your  aim  misleads  you  ;  passion 
will  not  suffer  you  to  heed  those  fancies 
of  a  worn-out  people  which  are  known  as  tact 
and  good  taste." 

Unhappy  France  !  Betrayed,  as  Renan  was 
never  weary  of  saying,  in  February  1848,  when 
Louis   Philippe  capitulated  to   a   mob   in   the 


Paris  and  yeriisale7n      167 

streets ;  bound  and  gagged  by  the  midnight 
crime  of  December  185 1  ;  it  had  been  brought 
to  a  pass  where,  he  continued  bitterly,  "  the 
good  God  vanished,  to  make  room  for  an  in- 
flexible Sebaoth,  who  could  only  be  touched  by 
the  moral  delicacy  of  Uhlans,  the  undoubted 
excellence  of  Prussian  bombshells."  The  hor- 
rible reign  of  violence  had  set  in.  Napoleon 
III  was  swept  into  the  gutter.  And  Kant's  dis- 
ciples laid  siege  to  Paris  with  a  stern  categorical 
imperative,  which  blazed  out  in  sheets  of  flame 
on  the  wintry  sky  and  rained  upon  Neuilly  a 
tempest    of    fire. 

What  could  the  peaceful  professor  do  in 
this  tumult  ?  Like  the  two  millions  of  Paris 
he  had  no  retreat.  He  stayed  in  his  old 
house,  lived  on  his  dole  of  black  bread  and 
salt  meat,  attended  the  dinner  at  Magny's 
where  a  small  company  foregathered  still,  and 
listened  while  Berthelot,  who  was  the  chemist 
of  the  Third  Republic,  denounced  Trochu  and 
wrung  his  hands  over  the  infinite  disorder  that 
reigned  in  high  places.  Strange  food  was  eaten 
by  the  besieged  philosophers  and  men  of  letters. 
Goncourt  relates,   with  a  grim  countenance, 


1 6  8  Renan 

how  they  were  compelled,  at  last,  to  eat  dog, 
disguised  as  mutton,  and  how  Renan  rushed 
with  loathing  from  the  banquet.  A  singular 
conclusion  to  his  German  studies  !  But  he 
would  not  indulge,  as  even  better  men  did,  in 
the  hope  of  revenge.  In  November,  when  Metz 
had  fallen  and  Gambetta  was  urging  forward 
those  untrained  levies  which  did  but  prolong 
the  agony  of  France,  Renan  braved  public 
opinion  by  advising  that  a  Parliament  should 
be  called  and  peace  made.  He  could  not  win 
a  hearing,  but  he  had  done  his  duty. 

A  conversation  at  Brebant's,  taken  down 
without  leave  by  Goncourt,  on  September  6, 
1870,  became  in  after  times  celebrated.  The 
guests  were  calling  out  for  vengeance  on  the 
invader,  who  would  soon  be  persuading  them  to 
devour  unclean  meats  and  broth  of  abominable 
things,  when  Renan  protested.  The  Germans 
were  a  superior  race — great  in  war  as  in  science 
generally  ;  and  as  for  revenge,  "  Perish  France," 
he  cried,  rising  to  his  feet,  "  perish  our  country  ; 
above  it  all  is  the  kingdom  of  Duty  and  Reason." 
He  was  met  with  shouts  of  execration.  "  No," 
thundered  St.  Victor,  "  we  are  not  going  to  be 


Paris  and  yerusalem      169 

esthetes  and  Byzantines ;  there  is  nothing 
above  our  country."  Renan,  says  the  narrator, 
had  quitted  his  place  and  was  moving  round 
the  table  with  uncertain  steps,  waving  his  short 
arms  in  the  air,  and  reciting  verses  from  the 
Bible.  "  All  is  there,"  he  reiterated,  adding 
as  he  went  to  the  window,  from  which  the 
evening  promenade  of  Parisians  was  visible, 
"  Look,  what  will  save  us  is  the  effeminacy  of 
that  population." 

The  hero  of  this  remarkable  scene  denied  it 
in  1890  almost  with  petulance,  but  it  shows  the 
man,  and  was  not  invented.  His  Intellectual 
and  Moral  Reform,  composed  during  the  siege, 
tells  a  like  story  in  words  more  carefully  chosen. 
"  The  country  of  idealists,"  he  repeated,  in 
spite  of  contradiction,  "  is  wherever  they  may 
think  freely."  The  Prussian  bombardment 
drove  him,  in  January,  1871,  from  his  house  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Seine ;  but  it  could  not 
alter  principles  which  were  the  fruit  of  a  life's 
meditation.  Every  day  his  wrath  against 
government  by  popular  suffrage  grew  more 
fierce.  "  Civilisation  has  always  been  a  crea- 
tion of  aristocracy,  upheld  by  a  small  number," 


1 7  o  Re7ian 

he  told  Berthelot  in  an  historic  letter.  He 
preferred  the  House  of  Orleans  to  any  Republic. 
It  was  the  ignorant  peasantry  that  had  raised 
Louis  Napoleon  to  his  dictatorship.  This 
Third  Republic  would  never  have  existed  but 
for  "  presumptuous  imbeciles," — he  meant 
especially  Gambetta, — rhetoricians  from  the 
south  who,  as  in  1789,  had  proved  too  much 
for  the  national  good  sense  with  their  frothy 
eloquence. 

On  the  other  hand,  St.  Cloud  was  a  heap 
of  smoking  ashes  ;  Auteuil  lay  bare  beneath 
such  a  hailstorm  of  shells  as  made  of  it  one 
ruin;  on  January  18,  1871,  King  William 
was  crowned  German  Emperor  at  Versailles 
amid  "  all  the  glories  of  France."  Rumours 
flew  about  that  Paris  itself  would  be  burnt,  if 
it  did  not  surrender.  "  We  shall  witness  a 
fresh  Apocalypse,"  said  Renan,  sighing  deeply. 

The  capitulation  arrived;  he  saw  his  Ger- 
mans march  down  through  the  Champs  Elysees 
to  the  Place  dc  la  Concorde,  as  in  a  city 
of  the  dead.  Then  he  went  back  home  • 
but  a  month  had  scarcely  elapsed  when 
the  National  Guard,   a   prctorian  democracy, 


Paris  and  yerusale7n      171 

proclaimed  the  Commune  ;  and  while  he  was 
quoting  Scripture  and  Spinoza,  "  To  arms  !  " 
resounded  once  more  along  the  Boulevards. 
"  The  weakness,  the  hesitation,  of  Government 
has  ruined  us,"  said  this  enlightened  critic, 
whose  judgment  of  M.  Thiers,  when  he 
abandoned  the  Capital,  has  been  confirmed 
by  history.  Could  France  live  again  ?  Had 
corruption  seized  its  vital  parts  ?  He  asked 
the  question,  but  hardly  dared  to  answer  it. 

His  intention  had  been  to  remain  in  Paris, 
provided  there  were  not  a  second  investment 
by  the  Prussians.  But  he  could  not  expose  his 
family  to  a  growing  risk  ;  about  April  28,  after 
a  month  of  the  Commune,  he  fled  with  them  to 
the  dismantled  cottage  at  Sevres  which  now 
f^ave  refuge  to  sixteen  persons.  Berthclot, 
who  was  at  Honflcur,  had  been  invited  to 
England  ;  but  Renan  dissuaded  him  from  going 
in  forcible  language,  though  he  almost  ex- 
pected to  sec  France  broken  up  and  the 
nation  perish.  He  felt  more  than  ever  that 
in  dethroning  her  Royal  House  she  had 
committed  the  unpardonable  sin,  the  crime 
against    history.     Liberals — he    named    Littrc 


172  Re7ian 

and  Henri  Martin — dealt  with  human  affairs  in 
too  simple  a  manner.  Their  aim  was  right, 
their  system  childish. 

The  ink  of  these  reflections  was  hardly  dry 
when  a  cloudburst  of  shells  from  the  ad- 
vancing army  fell  on  Sevres  and  obliged 
Renan  to  decamp.  He  passed  on  with  his 
household  to  Versailles.  The  last  day  of  the 
Commune,  Sunday,  May  28,  1 871,  dawned  in 
blood  and  fire.  He  was  then  writing  from 
Sevres  in  his  old  house,  and  towards  night- 
fall he  watched  the  great  sulphureous  con- 
flagration which  lit  up  with  a  yellow  glare  the 
sky  towards  the  east.  There  he  might  view 
the  end  of  a  "  criminal  extravagance,"  the 
reduction  to  the  absurd  of  theories  that  took 
not  into  account  elements  and  forces  which 
were  no  less  real  than  indispensable  to  civilized 
life.  Equality,  it  seemed  to  him,  never  had 
existed  among  nations  or  individuals.  "  The 
true  foundation  of  kindness,"  he  wrote  in  those 
fearful  days,  "  is  to  believe  in  a  providential 
order,  where  each  thing  has  its  place  and  its 
rank,  its  use  and  its  necessity."  But  he  saw 
religion  dying  round  him,  and  he  said,  "  We 


Paris  and  yerusalem      173 

are  living  on  the  shadow  of  a  shade.     By  what 
will  men  live  after  us  ?  " 

Though  fearing  that  the  soul  of  France  had 
been  mortally  wounded  in  1789  and  1793, 
Renan  proposed  in  his  Reform  Intellectual  and 
Moral  a  plan  which  no  one  would  ever  have 
deduced  from  the  tastes  of  so  resolutely  classical 
a  scholar.  In  literature  he  was  becoming  more 
and  more  the  Greek  who  was  condemned  to 
write  in  French,  and  who  made  the  best  of  it. 
But  his  politics  were  German,  feudal,  and 
aristocratic. 

To  explain  his  position  in  few  words  is  not 
easy.  Englishmen  have  seldom  perceived  how 
close  is  the  connexion  between  the  Imperial 
Roman  Law  and  the  Code  Napoleon  ;  neither 
do  they  seem  to  realize  that  democracy  in 
Latin  countries  is  altogether  unlike  what  we 
call  by  the  name  in  these  islands  or  in  the  United 
States.  For  on  the  Continent  it  has  drawn 
from  Justinian's  Pandects  the  twofold  element 
of  an  equality  without  distinctions  and  a  despot- 
ism without  any  court  of  appeal.  Now  the 
French  Revolution  was  nothing  but  this  Roman 
Law  dressed  in  modern  costume,  applied  to  an 


174  Renan 

order  of  things  which  had  grown  out  of  quite 
different  principles,  and  which,  therefore,  it 
could  only  pull  down.  Renan  had  a  clear  view 
of  the  opposition  between  these  two  forms,  the 
Imperial  and  the  Feudal.  He  held  that  State 
Socialism  could  not  fail  to  be  the  outcome  of 
French  democracy  ;  that  private  property  must 
be  defended  on  a  far  different  system ;  and 
that  without  the  principle  of  hereditary  succes- 
sion, made  permanent  in  a  royal  line,  civilized 
Europe  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  adventurers 
— of  soldiers  like  Bonaparte,  or  lawyers  like 
Gambetta.  The  Gauls  had  triumphed  over 
the  Franks  when  Louis  XVI  was  executed,  but 
they  could  only  break  with  so  resplendent  a 
past  by  falling  into  the  pit  of  an  ignoble 
anarchy.  The  omnipotent  State  would  never 
heal  these  woes,  for  it  was  their  very  source 
and  their  aggravation. 

Freedom,  he  went  on  to  argue,  was  not,  as 
people  fancied,  a  mere  means ;  it  was  an  end  in 
itself,  a  permanent  condition  of  progress ;  and 
the  Barbarians  that  overthrew  the  Western 
Empire  had  established  freedom.  For  what  is 
freedom  if  not  the  independence  of  individuals. 


Paris  and  yerusalem      175 


and  the  right  of  private  associations  to  manage 
their  own  affairs  ?  But  these  are  precisely  the 
things  which  no  government  issuing  from  the 
Revolution  will  endure.  Yet  progress  does 
not  come  from  without  ;  virtue  cannot  be 
decreed  by  Act  of  Parliament.  France  had 
"  sown  her  gardens  of  Adonis,  and  hoped  that 
the  sun  would  fertilize  flowers  which  had  no 
root  "  ;  her  idea  of  freedom  was  a  tyranny 
pressing  on  all  alike,  and  she  had  robbed  her 
citizens  of  the  courage  to  think  and  to  will. 
The  true  social  life  was  a  part  of  the  divine 
life  itself,  and  its  last  word  was  conscience. 

To  call  this  indictment  of  the  Revolution 
unpatriotic  was  much  easier  than  to  answer  it. 
Perhaps  a  candid  opponent,  while  allowing  its 
chief  articles,  would  reply  that  not  one  or  two, 
but  all  the  old  Sibylline  books  had  been  burnt, 
and  that  democracy  on  the  Roman  system  was 
in  possession,  while  the  better  form  of  which 
Renan  dreamt  could  simply  not  be  created  so 
late  in  the  day.  This,  at  all  events,  is  true  ;  that 
with  piercing  insight  he  who  was,  in  other  re- 
spects, much  of  a  dilettante,  had  seen  what 
scarcely  a   Liberal   in   any   land   had  taken   to 


176  Renan 

heart,  the  value  of  an  historical  past  to  a  nation, 
and  the  penalty  exacted  for  disregard  of  it. 
Whether  the  Latin  peoples  were  ever  to  enjoy 
an  ordered  freedom,  in  Church  or  State,  might 
be  a  problem.  But  rare,  surely,  was  the  merit  of 
an  observer  who  had  never  lived  among  free 
men,  yet  who  drew  so  distinctly  the  line  which 
divides  Europe  into  rival  camps,  and  which 
alone  will  account  for  the  political  vicissitudes 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  though  it  has  been 
overlooked  on  all  sides. 

No  one,  however,  was  inclined  to  follow 
Kenan's  lead.  The  old  factions  tore  their  coun- 
try asunder  ;  Henry  V  waved  his  white  flag  ; 
the  Bonapartes  and  the  House  of  Orleans  struck 
their  traditional  attitudes ;  the  Republic,  slowly 
gathering  might,  threw  off  and  exiled  the 
families  which  had  reigned  in  France.  Under 
this  Government  of  the  baser  sort  Renan  was 
destined  to  live  out  his  days.  He  counted  for 
nothing  in  the  world  of  politics.  The  Chair 
of  Hebrew  had  been  restored  to  him  in  1870. 
When  the  Commune  had  bled  its  last,  bayon- 
etted  and  shot  to  death  by  MacMahon,  the 
professor,'"now  an  important  man  in  his  Col- 


Paris  and  yericsalem      177 

lege,  went  to  Italy,  that  he  might  renew  his 
acquaintance  with  Rome,  and  evoke  from  the 
ruins  of  the  Forum  and  the  Palatine  the  ghost 
of  Nero. 

He  was  caught  once  more  by  the  ancient 
charm  ;  his  imagination  kindled,  and  under 
that  impulse  he  produced  his  Antichrist^  a 
work  of  art,  perhaps  the  most  brilliant  of  all 
that  he  has  left  us.  It  amused  and  delighted 
him.  "  I  will  not  deny,"  he  said  by  way 
of  introduction  to  it,  "  that  a  taste  for 
history,  the  incomparable  pleasure  which 
one  has  in  seeing  unrolled  before  one  the 
spectacle  of  mankind,  has  drawn  me  on  in  this 
volume.  Sometimes  I  have  rebuked  myself 
for  enjoying  life  so  keenly  in  my  workshop, while 
my  poor  country  was  consumed  in  a  slow  agony; 
but  my  conscience  is  at  rest."  He  had  done 
what  in  him  lay  to  prevent  or  to  heal  the  troubles 
of  the  time.  He  could  not  act  the  charlatan. 
This  very  book,  though  addressed  to  the  curious 
and  the  artistic,  not  to  the  crowd,  had  its  own 
moral,  "  triumphant  vice  denounced  when  at 
its  height  in  sublime  accents  by  the  saints." 
"  More  than  ever  am  I  convinced,"  said  the 

12 


I  7  8  Re72an 

writer,  "  that  religion  is  not  a  self-inflicted 
deception  ;  that  it  answers  to  an  object  outside 
of  us  ;  and  that  he  who  obeys  its  inspiration 
is  well  guided."  What  such  a  confession 
amounted  to  we  shall  learn  by  and  by  from  the 
Philosophic  Dialogues^  thrown  down  on  paper 
at  Versailles  in  1871,  but  not  given  to  the 
world  until  years  had  passed. 

His  present  subject  was  Nero,  the  true 
Antichrist  of  the  Book  of  Revelation.  "  Over 
against  Jesus,  tlie  ideal  of  goodness,"  he 
warns  us,  "  rises  up  a  monstrous  being  who  is 
the  embodiment  of  evil.  Reserved  like  Enoch 
and  Elias  to  play  his  part  in  the  world's 
last  act,  Nero  completes  the  Christian  myth- 
ology, inspires  the  first  sacred  book  of  the 
new  canon,  by  a  hideous  massacre  founds 
the  primacy  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  sets  on 
foot  the  revolution  which  is  to  make  of  Rome 
the  Holy  City,  the  second  Jerusalem.  At  the 
sarrc  hour,  by  one  of  those  mysterious  coin- 
cidences which  are  not  unknown  in  the  great 
crises  of  mankind,  Jerusalem  is  destroyed,  the 
Temple  passes  away  ;  Christianity,  more  and 
more  emancipated,  is  free  henceforth  from  a 


Paris  and  yerusalem      179 

vanquished   Judaism,  and  works  out    its  own 
destiny." 

But  again  the  figure  of  St.  Paul  rises  before 
us,  a   prisoner  in  Rome,  as  the  Acts  describe 
him,  yet  not  hindered  in  preaching  the  gospel. 
Renan  could  by  no  eflPort  overcome  his  repug- 
nance to  the  great  dogmatic  teacher.     St.  Paul's 
exaltation  of  Jesus    in  the  later  and  genuine 
Epistles  —  to  the  Philippians,   Colossians  and 
Ephesians — went  on  increasing,  says  his  critic, 
until   there    was  little  to  choose  between  his 
doctrine  and  that  of  the  Fourth  Evangelist. 
It  was,  in  fact,  the  spirit  of  St.  Paul,  he   con- 
tinues, which  ruled   those   Church    assemblies 
from  Nicaea    to  Chalcedon,  where   the    creed 
of  Christendom  was  definitely  shaped.     Renan 
calls  him  a  sectary  enamoured   of   the  absurd 
like  Tertullian,  an  enemy    to    culture,    which 
his    disciples    have  always  flouted  and  thrown 
back.     He   is  the   father  of   Puritans,  and  by 
his  hatred  of  the  world,  odium  generis  humani 
— the    charge    brought    against    Christians    in 
Tacitus — will    always    provoke    a   reaction   to 
those  Greek  ideas  which  he  has  decried  in  his 
most  violent  pages.    The  Letters  to  Titus  and 


1 8  o  Renan 

Timothy  are  not  of  St.  Paul's  composition, 
according  to  Renan,  but,  as  in  an  historical 
romance,  they  picture  not  untruly  his  mind, 
as  well  as  his  anticipations,  when  the  catastro- 
phe which  ended  him  was  approaching. 

St.  Paul  had  felt  that  he  must  bear  witness  to 
his  Master  in  Rome,  and  a  vision  of  Jesus  con- 
firmed the  resolve  he  had  taken.  That  appeal 
to  C'ccsar  and  his  eventful  voyage  determined 
St.  Peter  to  follow  him.  The  two  Apostles 
were  friends,  although  Peter  could  not  boldly 
take  sides  with  Paul  against  James  and  John, 
champions  of  legal  or  Ebionite  principles.  But 
by  quoting,  as  he  does,  from  the  Pauline 
writings  in  his  one  authentic  missive,  dated  at 
the  Roman  Babylon,  the  Prince  of  the  Apostles 
refutes  that  conception  of  Baur  which  makes 
no  allowance  for  Jewish  freedom  of  speech,  and 
which  is  too  absolute  to  be  trustworthy. 

Yet  St.  Peter  it  was,  continues  Renan,  who 
gave  the  Roman  Church  its  supreme  place  in 
Christendom.  The  poor  Syrian  emigrant  who 
found  a  home  in  the  Ghetto  beyond  Tiber,  at 
the  foot  of  the  Janiculum,  began  in  effect  that 
wonderful  dynasty  which  succeeded  to  all  the 


Paris  and  yerusale?n      i  8  i 


splendour  and  more  than  the  prerogatives  of  the 
Caesars.  St.  John  also,  the  son  of  thunder  to 
whom  we  owe  the  Apocalypse,  by  his  opposi- 
tion of  Rome  to  Jerusalem,  admits  or  recognizes 
the  part  that  was  to  be  enacted  by  the  Imperial 
City  in  God's  counsels.  The  seer  had  accom- 
panied St.  Peter,  perhaps  had  undergone  a  trial 
when  the  Neronian  persecution  broke  out.  Last 
of  all,  the  so-called  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  was 
dictated  by  the  same  events,  probably  sent  from 
Ephcsus  to  the  Roman  Christians,  and  abounds 
inTauline  ideas.  Thus,  if  we  glance  back  over  the 
progress  of  the  new  religion,  we  see  it  advancing 
from  Jerusalem  to  Antioch,  from  Antioch  to 
Ephesus,  from  Ephesus  to  Rome.  And  at  Rome 
the  chief  Apostles  meet  in  their  several  ways  to 
suffer  martyrdom,  while  Luke,  the  follower  of 
St.  Paul,  and  John  Mark,  the  disciple  of  St. 
Peter,  prepare  in  the  world's  Capital  to  write 
their  biography  of  Jesus. 

To  this  unexampled  situation,  in  which 
elements  at  once  diverse  and  strong  were  to 
be  fused  together,  Nero  supplies  the  centre, 
the  crisis,  and  the  issue.  Waiving  aside  the 
dreams  of  mystics,  Renan,  with  supreme  good 


I  8  2  Renan 

sense,  fixes  on  history  as  a  clue  to  the  Apoca- 
lypse. He  accepts,  indeed,  too  lightly  the 
grotesque  supposition  that  St.  Paul  everywhere 
lies  concealed  beneath  opprobrious  names  and 
types  in  that  "  written  ecstasy  " — to  use  the 
admirable  definition  which  Balzac  once  gave 
of  it.  But  on  such  a  point  we  need  not 
stop  to  argue.  That  Nero  is  the  subject 
of  St.  John's  anathemas,  and  that  under 
the  veil  of  strange  words,  cabalistic  numbers 
and  heaped  up  symbols,  the  revolutions  of  the 
Roman  Empire  have  been  shadowed  forth,  is 
a  theory  which  explains  what  would  otherwise 
be  incomprehensible.  Nor  was  that  theory  un- 
known to  the  generation  immediately  following 
the  Apostolic  age.  How  it  fell  into  discredit, 
while  the  Book  of  Revelation  itself  was  doubted 
or  left  among  the  Apocrypha  by  the  Eastern 
Fathers,  Renan  has  described  in  a  suggestive 
chapter.  These  questions  arc  for  theologians. 
The  reading  public,  which  is  incompetent  to 
decide  them,  will  be  more  taken  with  his  sketch 
of  Roman  life  and  manners  when  Nero,  the 
crazy  artist,  was  king. 

That  "  unfortunate  young  man  "  must  have 


Paris  a7id  yeriisale7n      183 

appeared  to  the  Renan  who  utters  his  para- 
doxes in  Goncourt's  Journal  as  a  singularly- 
modern  type.  He  is  decadent,  Parisian,  nay, 
in  the  slang  of  the  artist,  un  rate,  one  who 
has  attempted  great  things  and  achieved  none 
of  them.  He  cannot  be  presented  in  self- 
respecting  language  as  he  really  was.  The 
French  biographer  has  left  unquoted  his 
Roman  authors — laudably  enough,  for  they 
defy  translation  in  our  Christian  speech — at 
the  most  melancholy  turns  of  the  story.  Sucli 
reticence  has  a  grave  disadvantage ;  we  may 
be  led  to  think  of  the  monster  almost  with 
indulgence,  forgetting  his  crimes  to  smile  at 
his  extravagances. 

However,  it  is  certainly  true  that  "  mad- 
ness was  in  the  air";  and  that  "ifwc  except 
the  groups  of  aristocratic  Romans  who  were 
destined  to  arrive  at  power  with  Nerva  and 
Trajan,  a  general  want  of  seriousness  tempted 
men  the  most  considerable  in  some  sort  to  play 
with  life."  The  arbiter  of  elegance  was 
Petronius  ;  the  preacher,  himself  not  deeply  in 
earnest,  was  Seneca,  from  whom  our  dilettante 
borrows  a  significant  phrase,  applicable  to  the 


184  Renan 

Paris  of  his  own  day,  "  Intemperantia  litterarum 
laboramus,"  we  are  suffering  from  a  plague  of 
literature.  But  no  one  wrote  or  painted  or 
sculptured  beautiful  things  any  more.  Nero 
himself  is  defined  as  a  literary  perversion, 
whose  greatest  achievement  was  setting  fire  to 
old  Rome. 

This  burning  up  of  ancient  palaces  and  sacred 
shrines  marks  the  birthday  of  another  Rome, 
Christian,  nay  Catholic,  which  rose  amid  flames 
and  slaughter  in  the  Vatican  Circus  of  Nero, 
where  St.  Peter's  Confession  now  stands.  Early 
writings  connect  the  persecution  so  vividly 
described  by  Tacitus  with  the  martyrdom  of 
both  Apostles.  Renan  sees  no  ground  for 
doubting  the  statement ;  but  he  adds  a  con- 
jecture that  in  some  way  the  Jewish  enemies  of 
a  rapidly  growing  faith  were  instigated  by 
jealousy  to  denounce  their  former  brethren. 
At  all  events  "  after  the  day  when  Jesus  ex- 
pired on  Golgotha,  that  day  of  festival  in  Nero's 
gardens  (we  may  fix  it  about  August  i,  in  the 
year  64  a.d.)  was  the  most  solemn  in  Christian 
history." 

From  Parisian  decadents  Renan  had  learned 


Paris  and  jferusalem      185 

how  to  represent, "  intus  et  in  cute,"  the  elegant 
parricide,  actor,  singer  and  chariot-driver  who 
gave  to  Rome  its  baptism  of  blood.     He  lin- 
gered even  a  little  too  complacently  over  the 
art  which  from  flowers  of  evil  distils  a  deadly 
bouquet.     He  was  not  altogether  so  serious  as 
his  dreadful  subject  demanded.    But  his  second 
chapter,  dealing  with  revolted  Judaea,  the  siege 
of  Jerusalem,  and  Nero's  downfall,  required  to 
be  written  in  another  key,  of  which  the  note 
was  struck  by  his  experiences  during  the  Com- 
mune.    Had  the  Temple  continued  to  exist, 
with  its  law  and  its  sacrifices,  how  could  St. 
Paul's   free  spiritual  religion    have    survived  ? 
The  Fourth  Gospel  is  not  to  be  distinguished 
on  this  point  from  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans; 
in  both  it  is  the  assertion  of  Jesus  and  His  true 
disciples  that  "  not  in  this  mountain  nor  yet  at 
Jerusalem  shall  ye  worship  the  Father."  An  in- 
fatuation which  amazed  the  Roman  world,  a 
frenzy  breaking  out  in  revolt,  murder,  and  the 
suicide  of  a  whole  people,  brought  Vespasian  to 
the  walls  of  the  "  beloved  city,"  as  it  is  termed 
in   the   Apocalypse.     Then    East    and    West 
fell  into  confusion.      Three  Emperors,  Galba, 


1 8  6  Renan 

Otho,  Vitellius,  passed  like  phantoms  over  the 
scene.  Nero  became  a  fugitive,  who  heard 
in  pursuit  of  him  the  Furies  that  hunted 
Orestes.  He  disappeared  ;  but  was  he  dead  ? 
Would  he  not  come  again,  from  the  Parthians 
or  from  Egypt,  conquering  and  to  conquer  ? 
At  this  fateful  moment,  in  the  first  days  of  the 
year  69  a.d.,  so  Renan  argues,  the  Book  of 
Revelation  appeared,  written  by  St.  John  or  at 
his  suggestion.  It  is  the  seal  set  on  Old 
Hebrew  prophecy,  the  parting  embrace  be- 
tween Gospel  and  Talmud,  ere  they  bid  each 
other  an  everlasting  farewell. 

How  bold  a  thing  it  was  to  comment  before 
all  Paris  on  such  a  work  as  the  Apocalypse,  and 
how  rare  the  skill  with  which  the  commentator 
fulfilled  his  task,  will  be  evident  to  those  who 
have  gone  through  Renan's  large  volume,  where 
every  page  is  ancient  history  in  a  modern  setting. 
We  may  liken  the  renegade  of  St.  Sulpice,  now 
a  somewhat  worldly-minded  man,  or,  as  a  witty 
friend  called  him, "  the  dandy  of  exegesis,"  com- 
pelled to  look  on  while  Paris  was  burning,  to 
Josephus,  equally  a  deserter,  yet  always  a  Jew, 
and  the  historian  of  his  nation's  ruin.     Josephus 


Paris  and  yerusa/e?n      187 

wrote  his  chronicle  for  the  Flavian  Emperors, 
perhaps  under  their  roof  on  the  Palatine. 
Renan  hoped  against  hope  that  Paris  would  take 
warning  from  Jerusalem. 

As  ever,  his  heart  was  divided.  Imperial 
Rome  conquered  by  virtue  of  its  good  sense, 
its  law  which  did  not  involve  a  theocracy, 
its  common  rights  of  citizenship.  The  Jew, 
the  zealot,  the  Christian,  the  monk,  all 
akin  and  one  as  intolerant  as  the  other, 
have  been,  he  says,  a  menace  to  civilisa- 
tion. Yet  the  victory  of  Titus  could  not  be 
final.  Our  Western  races  are  the  flower  of 
men,  but  in  religion  they  create  nothing 
durable  or  profound.  What  could  be  expected 
from  the  prosaic  Roman  ritual,  the  super- 
stitions of  Gaul,  or  even  the  Greek  mysteries, 
in  comparison  with  ideals  like  the  Synagogue 
and  the  Church  ?  The  heavenly  Jerusalem 
did,  therefore,  overcome  Babylon  when  the 
earthly  had  sunk  down  in  flames  ;  and  the  arch 
of  Titus  records  a  triumph  which  is  seen  to  be 
undone  upon  the  arch  of  Constantine. 

But,  says  the  preacher,  let  France  read  her 
future  in  that  past.     Every  nation  which  de- 


1 8  8  Renan 

votes  itself  to  social  and  political  agitation  is 
doomed.  If  it  seeks  a  "  kingdom  of  God,"  lives 
on  general  ideas,  pursues  a  quest  of  world-wide 
importance,  it  will  never  be  a  great  Power. 
"  We  are  not  mistaken  when  we  cry  out 
to  France,  '  Give  up  the  Revolution  or 
perish,'  but  yet  if  a  single  one  of  its  dreams 
should  be  fulfilled,  the  misery  of  1870  and 
1871  will  have  had  its  revenge."  Is  this  an 
apology  for  the  Commune  ?  Renan  abhorred 
its  excesses  ;  but  he  was  ever  unwilling  to  shut 
the  gates  of  the  future  in  the  face  of  unknown 
possibilities.  In  daily  life  a  peaceable  and 
smiling  bourgeois,  the  instant  he  takes  up  his 
pen  he  becomes  a  Utopian.  The  hero  as 
thinker  must  not  be  scared  by  the  police  ; 
no  transformation,  in  the  long  run,  is  incredible. 
Jerusalem  fallen,  the  old  order  vanished,  the 
Christian  set  free  from  a  yoke  which  even  St. 
Paul  could  not  have  unfastened,  a  problem  of 
reconciliation  between  the  new  faith  and  the 
ancient  Empire  could  not  fail  to  arise.  How 
it  was  resolved  is  the  question  which  occupied 
three  volumes  and  another  nine  years  of  this 
indefatigable  career.     The  Antichrist  came  out 


Paris  a7id  yeriisalem      189 


in  1873,  Marcus  Aurelius^  which  completes  the 
Origins  of  Christianity,  was  published  in  1882. 
A  full  twenty-five  years  had  been  consumed  in 
journeys,  reading  and  composition,  since  the 
author  took  up  his  large  enterprise.  Only  ten 
years  remained  to  him  ;  these  he  spent  on 
minor  works  and  the  History  of  Israel. 

A  change  in  tone  and  treatment  had,  mean- 
while, come  over  his  writings.     He  had  always 
denied  miracles  ;   but  when  he  began  the  Life 
of  Jesus,  there  was  in  his  mind  a  tendency  to 
recognize    what    we    may    term    the    Divine 
drama,  something  not  unlike  Providence,  under 
whose  guidance    Greek,  Hebrew,  and  Roman 
were  united  in  a  common  though  unconscious 
building  up  of  Humanity.     The  doctrine  of 
final  causes,  not  quite  in  its  popular  sense,  was 
admitted,   was   dwelt  upon.     Then  came  the 
catastrophe  of  France,  and  farewell  to  Renan's 
calm  serenity,  which  had  led  him  to  believe  in 
progress,  and  at  one  time  actually  to  maintain 
that  "  the  world  made  better  by  science  will  be 
the  kingdom  of  the  spirit,  the  reign  of  the  chil- 
dren  of   God."     But  now  he   perceived   that 
science    might   yield    a   Prussian    army   as  its 


190  Renan 

outcome,  or  a  revolution  ending  in  the  torches 
of  the  fetroleuses.  Another  man,  thunder- 
stricken  like  St.  Paul,  would  perhaps  have 
revised  his  premisses  ;  not  so  the  unrepentant 
cleric.  What  he  did  was  to  alter  his  con- 
clusions, modulate  into  a  lighter  key,  frankly 
contradict  himself,  and  take  pleasure  in  be- 
wildering his  readers. 

Friendly  critics  have  described  this  decline 
from  the  serious  to  the  merely  amusing  as 
"  M.  Kenan's  third  manner."  The  first  was 
learned  and  a  trifle  heavy,  witness  Averroes. 
The  second,  which  took  its  colour  from 
Michelet  and  George  Sand,  was  romantic, 
sentimental,  persuasive,  balanced,  not  incapable 
of  rising  to  heights  where  the  grandest  his- 
torians had  trodden.  What  was  the  third  ? 
In  diction,  admirably  French,  on  a  model  that 
cannot  quite  be  found  under  Louis  Quatorze, 
yet  is  hinted  by  Fenelon,  and  would  have  been 
praised  by  Port  Royal.  The  lucid  words, 
however,  and  the  sentences  that  flow  like  a 
stream  of  honey,  do  not  convey  one  uniform 
or  consistent  idea.  That  charming  woman, 
Madame  Alphonsc  Daudet,  said  in  her  gentle 


Paris  and  yeriisalem      191 


way  of  Renan,  when  he  had  delivered  his 
address  on  being  received  into  the  French 
Academy,  "  No,  he  really  has  not  the  sentiment 
of  affirmation."  He  was  the  newest  Abelard, 
setting  in  parallel  phrases  the  "  Yea  and  Nay  " 
of  a  spirit  essentially  incoherent. 

He  would  not  bribe  the  judge  ;  that  had  been 
his  argument  ;  but  in  things  which  lie  outside 
mathematics  there  is  no  judge,  if  we  do  not  pass 
sentence  ourselves.  What  is  Truth,  if  not  sacred, 
ethical,  and  the  reward  of  conviction, — in  other 
words,  an  active  insight  to  which  we  contri- 
bute all  our  powers,  including  a  good  will  ? 
At  any  rate,  we  may  watch  this  fine  intellect 
losing  its  grasp  on  reality  in  proportion  as  it 
loses  its  moral  earnestness.  The  unity  of  its 
conception  wavers  and  disappears  ;  the  Divine 
drama  moves  "  in  a  wide  sea  of  wax,"  not  tend- 
ing anywhither  ;  and  by  a  fortune  which  we 
have  illustrated  elsewhere  from  his  French 
contemporaries,  this  Plato  becomes,  instead  of 
a  noble  thinker,  a  student  in  bric-a-brac,  idly 
strolling  through  collections  wherever  old 
curiosities  are  to  be  found.  If  science  did  not 
lay  down  conclusions,  why  should  he  ?     The 


192  R 


enan 


plausible  guesses  which  left  events  undecided — 
much  as  certain  story-tellers  have  written  two 
endings  to  their  novels — were  at  least  amusing. 
History  thus  became  anecdotage,  or  psycho- 
logy taught  by  examples  ;  the  governing  idea 
withdrew  into  its  own  heaven  whither  no  man 
could  pursue  it.  Science,  admitting  its  failure 
to  interpret  the  facts,  was  yet  a  chapter,  nay 
the  whole  series  of  chapters,  in  the  world's 
development  which  had  been  denominated 
"  history  "  and  "  reason."  The  contradictions 
in  such  a  view  are  flagrant  enough  ;  Renan 
assures  us  that  they  are  inevitable  and  do  not 
signify. 

There  is  no  room,  and  little  need,  to  travel 
over  the  second  Christian  century  with  a  guide 
so  capricious.  Yet  we  may  remark  on  the 
comparative  soundness  of  his  judgment  where 
it  touches  the  Gospels,  their  date  and  their 
relation  to  one  another,  while  the  leading  Ger- 
man critics  were  still  at  play  among  unverified 
conjectures.  Questions  remain  which  can  be 
solved  by  no  ingenuity,  for  the  terms  of  a  solu- 
tion are  not  given.  But  in  coming  back  to- 
wards the  traditional  view  of  the  Synoptics, 


Paris  and  yeriisalem      193 

the  Acts,  the  Pauline  Epistles,  Renan  showed 
courage  no  less  than  acuteness,  which  deserve 
to  be  acknowledged.  Of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
he  writes,  after  much  hesitation,  "  It  is  likely 
that  a  disciple  of  the  Apostle  John,  who  had 
inherited  many  of  his  reminiscences,  felt 
authorized  to  speak  in  his  name,  and  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  years  after  his  death  to  write 
down  those  things  which  unhappily  had  not 
been  fixed  on  paper  during  his  lifetime." 
That  Gospel  was  the  stroke  which  at  last  de- 
livered the  Church  from  Judaism.  It  opened 
the  way  to  Christian  philosophy,  as  St.  Paul 
had  been  the  first  to  sketch  its  theology.  But 
the  canon  of  Scripture,  to  whom  was  that 
owing  ?  Renan  takes  us  to  the  year  180  a.d., 
to  the  Roman  Church,  and  the  Muratorian 
Fragment  (since,  in  its  original  form,  assigned 
to  Hippolytus  of  Porto)  as  the  time  and  place 
where  the  New  Testament  was  closed  against 
additions.  His  early  admiration  of  Rome 
never  died  out.  The  Catholic  Church,  he 
declared,  was  the  saving  of  Christianity  from 
Gnostics,  Oriental  and  Greek,  who  would  have 
turned  it  with  a  host  of  wild  fancies  into  a 

13 


194  Re?tan 

conventicle    of    madmen.       And    Rome    first 
uttered  that  august  name. 

True,  he  continues  with  transcendent  scorn, 
authority  is   founded   on   the   commonplace  ; 
but  bishops  were  preferable  to   epileptics,  and 
in  the  Roman  See  bishops  had  a  centre  upon 
which  they  might  always  fall  back.     Not  per- 
sonal inspiration  but  collective  wisdom  ;    not 
anarchy  but  unity  ;    this  was  the  creative  idea 
which  became  visible  in  Clement,  and  which, 
gaining  power  with  every  success,  drawing  to 
it  appeals  from  orthodox  and  heretic,  in  the 
capital  of   the  world,  formed  the  keystone  of 
an  arch  that  would  otherwise  have  fallen  into 
a  heap  of  ruins.     The  reconciliation  of  Peter 
and  Paul   in   the   Roman    legend  had  been  a 
master-stroke.     Tradition,  authority,  prestige, 
were  combining  to  establish  the  Papal  domin- 
ion, which  before  the  second  century  ended  was 
manifest   in   sovereign   acts,    as   when   Victor 
threatened  to  excommunicate  the  Churches  of 
Asia,    though   they   pleaded   against   him   St. 
John's    example  in  the  Quartodeciman  con- 
troversy. 
On  questions  like  these,  once  hotly  debated, 


Paris  and  jferusakm      195 

but  now  in  course  of  settlement,  Renan  was 
almost  as  Catholic  as  ever  he  had  been.  He 
could  not  trace  in  the  Gnostic  aberrations, 
which  mingled  with  some  elements  of  the 
Gospel  fantastic  and  too  often  demoralizing 
myths  from  Asia  Minor,  nay  from  the  Inner 
East,  the  true  lines  upon  which  Christian  de- 
velopment moved.  He  had  never  taken  the 
view,  long  favoured  by  English  and  German 
historians,  that,  when  the  last  of  the  Apostles 
died,  a  sudden  lapse  into  Paganism  followed, 
infecting  the  visible  Church,  and  leaving  only 
a  hidden  remnant  who,  by  ways  hardly  dis- 
cernible, continued  through  heretics  like  the 
Paulicians  to  hand  on  the  saving  Faith.  He 
granted  much — too  much,  it  will  be  said  by 
careful  critics — not  to  this  early  Protestant 
reading  of  history,  but  to  those  who  saw  in 
Gnostic  ritual,  art  and  speculation  the  Church 
turned  Pagan,  accommodating  itself  to  the 
heathen  world,  and,  like  all-conquering  Rome, 
subdued  by  the  Greeks.  But  still  it  was  the 
Church,  rooted  and  founded  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament, which  inherited  from  Jesus  the  Divine 
fire  that  burnt  in  its  Holy  Place  ;    from  Peter 


196  Renan 

its  royal  supremacy  ;  from  Paul  and  James  and 
Luke  its  Sacraments  in  their  primitive  form, 
and  its  episcopal  order ;  from  John  its  rite 
of  perpetual  sacrifice,  shadowed  forth  in  the 
Apocalypse,  and  yet  again  its  Logos,  to  whom 
all  wisdom,  Greek  as  well  as  Hebrew,  must  be 
ascribed. 

By  the  charismata  of  unauthorized  inspira- 
tions, he  argued,  no  Church  could  have  held 
together.  Rome,  with  its  genius  for  ruling 
over  chaos  by  hierarchy,  sacraments,  synods, 
and  public  creeds,  has  tamed  religious  rebels 
or  cast  them  out,  chosen  between  the  good 
and  evil  in  Hellenic  learning,  and  made  the 
Christian  State  possible.  This  was  not  the 
corruption  of  the  best ;  it  was  the  reconcilia- 
tion in  thought  and  practice  of  all  that  man- 
kind had  brought  down  on  innumerable  lines 
out  of  a  past  which  could  never  be  recalled. 

Nero  had  seen  the  growing  power  and 
striven  to  consume  it  on  a  funeral  pile  ;  he 
was  the  Antichrist  by  his  triumphant  and  enor- 
mous vices.  A  hundred  years  later  came  Mar- 
cus Aurelius,  saint  and  emperor,  who  was 
taught  the  sum  of  virtuous  living  by  his  father 


Paris  and  jferusa/em       ic)j 


Antoninus,  but  who,  on  this  very  account, 
appears  in  Kenan's  last  volume  to  be  the  rival 
of  Jesus.  Wholly  independent  of  dogma,  re- 
velation, and  the  supernatural,  he  is  lay  virtue 
personified.  These  words,  lay  and  clerical, 
which  exert  on  French  politics  a  charm  not 
less  deadly  than  the  words  Guelf  and  Ghibelline 
exerted  on  Italian  cities  in  the  time  of  Dante, 
suppose  that  men  must  be  ranged  in  two  hostile 
camps.  The  laic  is  a  votary  of  Reason,  self- 
sprung  and  self-sufficient  ;  he  is  a  humani- 
tarian who  believes  in  no  God,  and  whose  reli- 
gion is  social  service.  But  he  is  likewise  the 
unsleeping  enemy  of  all  who  do  not  sign  his 
creed.  In  his  eyes  every  true  disciple  of  Jesus 
is  a  traitor  to  civilisation.  "  Lay "  virtue 
breeds  Jacobins ;  it  shuts  up  Christian  schools  ; 
it  puts  down  religious  orders  ;  it  sends  priests 
and  nuns  to  the  guillotine,  as  in  1794.  It  is, 
in  fine,  a  Church  militant,  with  Inquisition, 
secular  arm,  cord,  stake,  and  axe,  for  all 
those  on  whom  it  fixes  the  charge  of  incivisme 
or  disbelief  in  its  dogmas. 

Rcnan,   to   his   credit   be   it   spoken,   always 
defended  the  right  of  free  association,  which  is 


Re?ian 

in  France  cruelly  hampered,  and  which  in  the 
case  of  Catholics  has  been  over  and  over  again 
suppressed.  He  could  not  bring  himself  to 
apologize  for  the  old  Roman  Law,  whose 
jealousy  of  private  gatherings  the  French 
jurist  had  copied  only  too  well.  Yet,  when 
he  came  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  who  in  his  own 
person  embodied  that  Law,  the  temptation  to 
set  him  up  as  the  Christ  of  Rationalism  proved 
too  strong  for  Renan's  principles,  and  with 
surprise  we  listen  while  a  veteran  among 
Liberals  pours  out  his  eulogy  of  absolute 
power.  We  call  to  mind  other  pages  that  im- 
plore France  to  have  done  with  Roman  juris- 
prudence, to  learn  from  the  free  Barbarians 
what  liberty  can  achieve  for  a  nation  ;  and 
now  we  are  told  that  the  Stoics  founded 
that  "  Law  of  modern  peoples "  which  is 
winning  its  triumph,  slow  but  sure,  over 
the  Christian  ideas.  The  Stoic,  in  Renan's 
account  of  him,  is  not  to  be  distinguished 
from  those  French — energumens  did  he  not 
style  them  once  ? — who,  out  of  their  seething 
cauldron,  would  have  drawn  a  regenerated 
country,  but  could  evoke  only  phantasmal  hor- 


Paris  a?ici  ye?^usa/em       199 

rors.  Making  allowance  for  the  complexities 
of  a  vast  subject,  in  which  the  point  of  view 
changes  with  its  field,  we  are  still  at  a  loss  to 
imagine  how  the  author  would  reconcile  his 
love  of  freedom,  which  we  cannot  deny,  with 
his  admiration  for  a  Law  that  never  suffered  it 
to  breathe. 

However,  the  contrast  between  Marcus, 
who  wrote  his  own  Gospel,  and  Another  whose 
writing  was  the  Cross,  affords  such  a  theme  as 
grandly  to  sum  up  the  long  debate  of  Church 
and  Empire,  if  not  to  bring  about  a  reconcilia- 
tion in  which  reason  and  faith  might  embrace. 
The  manner  of  this  concluding  volume  is  ex- 
ceedingly fine  wherever  it  touches  on  the  Medi- 
tations, that  sad  and  subduing  book,  not  rightly 
termed  by  Renan  the  Laymari's  Vade  Mecum^ 
for  all  its  grace  flows  from  submission  to  the 
Divine  Will,  as  revealed  in  the  nature  of  things. 
Marcus  would  not  have  made  common  cause 
with  Renan,  though  Renan  strives  to  be  at  one 
with  Marcus.  What  fellowship  has  the  Stoic 
with  the  dilettante  ?  Who  could  be  less  of  a 
Puritan  than  our  sauntering  professor,  led  by 
a  "  lively  curiosity,"  as  he  tells  us,  to  consider 


2  00  Renan 

the  ways  of  men  ?  And  who  could  be  more  so 
than  the  Emperor,  absorbed  in  his  own  spirit, 
eaten  up  with  scruples,  always  alone,  sighing 
like  a  Christian  saint  over  the  perversity  of 
human  nature  ? 

At  this  distance  from  Renan's  noviciate 
we  feel  that  his  fears,  long  ago  expressed 
to  the  Abbe  Cognat,  were  by  no  means  un- 
founded. "  Even  so,  could  I  be  sure  of  my- 
self !  "  he  had  written  in  1845  ;  "  but  how  if 
I  came  to  lose  by  contact  with  them^'' — he 
means  with  irreverent  Liberals, — "  the  purity 
of  my  heart  and  my  view  of  life  ?  — if  they 
succeeded  in  infecting  me  with  their  own 
Positivism  ?  Who  can  know  himself  and  not 
be  afraid  of  his  weakness  ?  "  Intellectual 
weakness,  which  staggers  to  and  fro  like  a 
drunken  man  from  one  view  to  its  opposite  ; 
moral  weakness,  which  cannot  discern  the  Stoic 
who  is  hard  upon  himself  from  the  Jacobin  who 
keeps  all  his  austerity  for  others ;  and,  it  must 
be  said,  even  weakness,  in  the  handling  of  art, 
since  it  betrayed  the  artist  into  a  comparison 
which  exalts  thc^Roman  Emperor,  who  founded 
nothing  durable,  above  Christ  and  His  Apos- 


^aris   a  fid  jferusaie/n       2  o  i 


ties,  to   whom    mankind   owes    its   salvation. 
The  drift  of  that  specious  argument  is  clear. 
For  the  last  time    Renan  was  contending  on 
behalf  of  his  Utopia  which  refused  to  be  born. 
The  advent  of  science,  or  lay  knowledge,  lead- 
ing  up  to  a  philosophy  in  the  shape  of  ethics 
founded  on  experience,   without  sanction  from 
God  or  hope  of  Heaven,  was  to  have  brought 
in    a    social    Paradise.      How    differently    had 
things  turned  out!      Wars  and  rebellions;    a 
burning  Paris ;    a  Republic  of   all   the   medio- 
crities; asensibledecline  from  heroism  to  money- 
making  ;  and  "  a  fall  in  ethical  values,"  which 
portended  misfortune  still  greater.     Was,  then, 
the  supernatural  justified  by  facts  ?     He  would 
never  believe  it.     He  pointed  to  the  Roman 
Law   which    had   given   to   Europe    a   golden 
age  ;   he  instanced  the  philanthropy  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  who  was  tender  to  slaves,  orphans,  and 
the  helpless,  though  he  persecuted  Christians. 
After  all,  what  need  was  there  of  Revelation  ? 
Such   is    the   lesson   which    this   delicately- 
wrought    lay    sermon    inculcates    through    its 
six  hundred  pages.     A  fruitful  essay  might  be 
attempted  by  one  who  bhould  examine  it  with 


2  o  2  Renan 

Pater's  romance,  Marius  the  Epicurean,  lying 
before  him  as  a  statement  on  the  other  side, 
equal  to  it  in  dainty  phrasing,  temperate  and 
calm,  but  more  in  earnest,  and  in  its  conclusions 
more  like  the  course  of  history.  For  while 
the  unhappy  Emperor,  "  anima  infelicissima," 
could  make  martyrs  at  Lyons  and  Vienne,  he 
could  not  put  down  the  gladiatorial  shows,  or 
by  his  philosophy  prevent  his  subjects  from 
being  dedicated  in  blood  to  Mithras,  or  purify 
the  innumerable  superstitions  to  which  Apu- 
leius,  who  knew  them  all  intimately,  bears  wit- 
ness. He  might  have  been  a  blameless  Con- 
stantine  ;  he  was  in  fact,  but  a  nobler  Julian, 
proving  by  his  own  example  how  little  the 
Stoic  reason  can  influence  multitudes,  and  how 
barren  was  the  lay  reform  on  which  he  had  set 
his  heart. 

But  those  Christians,  we  hear  from  Renan, 
who  is  almost  as  indignant  as  the  heathen 
writers  he  is  copying,  bled  the  Empire  to 
death  by  their  determination  not  to  mix  in 
its  business  or  its  pleasures.  Yet  how  could 
that  be,  if  the  Empire  had  a  vitality  which  its 
Law   sustained  ?     In  granting  so  much — and 


Paris  and  yerusa/em      203 

he  repeats  the  charge  when  he  is  dealing  with 
French  Catholics — surely  he  is  giving  up  his 
case.  It  would  appear,  then,  that  neither 
ancient  philosophy  nor  modern  science  can 
furnish  an  enduring  foundation  for  society. 
The  Roman  Empire  fell  because  it  accepted 
the  Gospel  too  late  in  its  career  ;  the  world  is 
now  rocked  by  revolutions  because  it  has  sub- 
stituted for  that  Gospel  a  law  which  has  no 
deeper  sanction  than  use  and  wont.  After  the 
Antonines,  Pagan  Rome  lost  its  justification 
to  the  moral  sense.  Christianity  triumphed, 
for  it  had  in  it  the  promise  of  the  world  to 
come. 


Chapter  VII 
ECCLESIASTES,  OR  THE  PREACHER 

SCEPTIC,  idealist,  amused  spectator  of 
all  time  and  all  existence, — these  pro- 
voking but  not  contradictory  epithets 
paint  the  Renan  who,  between  1871  and 
1892,  disputed  first  with  Victor  Hugo  and 
then  with  M.  de  Lesseps  the  distinction,  what- 
ever it  was  worth,  of  being  the  foremost  French 
celebrity.  In  his  own  thought  he  was  an 
Ecclesiastes,  gay  but  without  illusions,  holding 
all  things  to  be  vanity,  yet  enjoying  them  as  if 
they  had  savour  and  substance.  His  Philoso- 
phic Dialogues  date  back,  as  we  saw,  to  Ver- 
sailles and  the  agony  of  the  Commune  in  1871  ; 
they  were  varnished,  so  to  call  it,  for  pub- 
lication in  1875.  They  begin  somewhat  like 
the  Decameron  during  a  season  of  distress,  to 
end  ironically  in  dreams  that  are  set  down 
by  the  dreamer   as    falsehoods    which    might 

304 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher   205 

hereafter  come  true.  Thanks  to  his  "  third 
manner,"  one  lobe  of  the  brain  might  argue 
for  the  affirmative,  while  another  maintained 
the  negative.  The  play  was  to  be  rounded 
off  with  a  smile  and  a  sleep  ;  for  how  could 
the  preacher  dogmatize  if  he  had  no  settled 
beliefs,  and  who  would  take  his  word  as 
peremptory  ?  Dialogue,  not  dogma,  was  the 
new  form  of  assertion  ;  all  systems  in  succession, 
or,  better  still,  all  at  once.  Yet  the  general 
effect  was  so  unpleasant  that  a  lady  to  whom 
Renan  showed  his  manuscript  exclaimed,  "  Do 
not  print  those  pages ;  they  make  one's  heart 
freeze." 

Of  course  he  did  print  them.  He  could 
revise  endlessly  what  he  had  written  ;  he  seems 
never  to  have  destroyed  any  of  it.  "  I  am  not 
acquainted  with  a  gay  philosophy,"  said  this 
stroller  in  Vanity  Fair,  beginning  his  discourse  ; 
but  why  not  cultivate  good  humour,  the  best 
of  all  philosophies  ?  Nature  was  herself  eter- 
nally young.  We  had,  indeed,  come  to  a  crisis 
without  way  of  escape,  unless  she  should  invent 
one,  as  she  had  always  done  hitherto.  The  old 
doctrines  which  helped   men   to   be   virtuous 


2o6  Renan 

had  been  rudely  disturbed,  and  no  others  had 
taken  their  place.  Idealism  would  suffice  for 
the  cultivated,  who  by  instinct  were  well  be- 
haved, after  the  fashion  of  those  creatures  that 
went  on  acting  as  if  alive  when  their  brains  had 
been  removed.  For  the  millions  it  was  cer- 
tainly not  enough. 

Such  was  the  text  of  Renan's  preachment 
to  an  unbelieving  France.  Had  Pere  de  Mon- 
sabre  delivered  it  from  the  pulpit  of  Notre 
Dame,  the  hosts  of  anti-clericalism  would 
have  been  up  in  arms  against  its  cruel  satire. 
But,  however  else  he  swung  to  and  fro,  on  this 
chief  point  of  a  moral  decadence  Renan  did 
not  change.  The  outrages  on  good  taste  in  his 
dramas.  The  Water  of  Touth  and  The  Abbess 
of  Jouarre,  may  be  palliated,  though  not  ex- 
cused, by  the  strength  of  this  conviction,  which 
in  very  curious  ways  they  illustrate.  Renan 
was  not  only  Ecclesiastes ;  the  heterodox 
would  have  been  warranted  in  calling  him 
Balaam,  for  he  blessed  the  tents  of  Jacob  when 
desired  to  curse  them  altogether.  He  had 
known  absolute  virtue  in  his  young  days  at 
Treguier  and  Issy  ;   the  brilliant  heathens  with 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    207 

whom  he  dined  in  the  Cafe  Brehant  could 
never,  he  told  them,  imagine  what  it  was  like. 

His  "  certitudes,  probabilities,  and  guesses  " 
acquaint  the  reader  with  nothing  new.  Na- 
ture is  immoral  ;  to  justify  the  ways  of  God 
to  men  is  a  hopeless  undertaking  ;  abstract 
logic  fails  to  show  that  He  exists,  and  experi- 
ence has  never  made  Him  known  ;  but  the 
heart  reveals  a  category  of  the  ideal,  and  why 
not  be  satisfied  ?  Why  not  ?  we  rejoin.  Be- 
cause the  lay  preacher  is  himself  not  satisfied. 
Take  the  proof. 

Writing  to  M.  Berthelot,  in  the  letter  that 
George  Eliot  slighted,  Renan  moves  from  this 
"pure  idea"  to  an  evolution,  a  world-making, 
so  comprehensive  that  it  swallows  up  history 
in  the  physics  of  the  sun,  and  stretches  out 
beyond  our  widest  human  advance  to  an  in- 
definite future.  Renan  affirms  that  Deity  is 
not  yet,  but  shall  be  ;  and,  while  he  denies 
intelligence  and  moral  attributes  to  the  First 
Cause,  this  eternal  process,  he  believes,  will 
bring  forth  a  God  of  goodness  and  mercy  at 
the  end.  No  more  glaring  contradiction  to 
his   own  thought  and  to  the  nature  of  things 


2  o  8  Renan 

was  ever  ventured  upon  than  is  here  proposed. 
The  real  is  not  the  ideal,  says  our  teacher, 
but  a  vast  outrage  on  it,  and  history  a  series 
of  defeats  for  the  righteous  ;  which  if  you 
grant,  he  will  at  once  turn  round  upon  you 
and  prove  that  an  ideal,  an  inward  teleology 
as  the  Germans  call  it,  is  guiding  the  universe 
along  paths  which  cannot  but  issue  in  such  a 
millennium  as  the  Prophets  of  Israel  foresaw. 
That  Mr.  Spencer  should  have  held  this 
creed  was  sufficiently  astonishing ;  but  he, 
at  all  events,  did  not  oppose  history  to  science, 
and  both  to  philosophy,  by  way  of  premisses 
to  a  scheme  from  which  evil  disappears.  If 
the  Idea  is  not  revealed  in  Nature,  where  can 
it  be  found  ?  And  if  it  governs  Nature,  how 
is  it  not  revealed  ?  Renan  puts  the  question 
to  himself, "  How  reconcile  such  sentiments  " 
— as  universal  benevolence — "  with  an  iron 
law  of  things,  with  belief  in  the  sovereign  rule 
of  reason  ?  "  He  replies,  "  I  do  not  know, 
and  I  care  as  little.  Benevolence  does  not 
depend  on  theory."  With  a  fervour  not  quite 
reassuring  he  continues,  "  One  thing  is  certain. 
Humanity  will  draw   from   its  own   heart   as 


Rcclesiastes^  or  the  Pf'eacher    209 

many  illusions  as  it  requires  to  fulfil  its  duties 
and  accomplish  its  destiny.  It  has  not  failed 
hitherto,  nor  will  it  fail."  In  other  words, 
it  can  always  be  deceived  by  itself. 

The  cynic  has  had  his  jest ;  the  dreamer 
follows  it  up.  We  may  imagine  the  unity  to- 
wards which  all  things  are  moving  as  a  sen- 
sorium  or  "  conscience  " — to  use  the  French 
expression — and  this  again  as  shared  by  many, 
or  by  few,  or  appropriated  to  himself  by  a  single 
individual.  Science  will  surely  be  master  of 
this  planet ;  or,  should  earth  perish  in  a  catas- 
trophe of  the  solar  system,  then  of  some  other. 
Will  democracy  prevail  in  that  ordered  world  ? 
It  is  not  likely,  answers  Theoctiste  ;  culture, 
discipline,  progress,  are  incompatible  with  an 
American  suffrage.  The  leveller  is'condemned 
by  Nature  and  Darwin.  But  might  there  not 
come  to  pass  a  rule  of  the  select,  armed  with 
all-creating,  all-annihilating  knowledge,  irre- 
sistible as  no  Church  or  State  ever  was  ?  A 
senate  of  gods  would  then  dominate  mankind. 
Lastly,  however,  an  omnipotent  biologist, 
emerging  from  his  equals,  might  concentrate 
in  a  life  without  end  pleasure,  wisdom    and 


2  I  o  Renan 

goodness,  while  the  few  and  the  many,  ab- 
sorbed in  that  great  whole,  would  enjoy  "  by- 
procuration  "  their  share  of  the  universe. 
Some  one  has  called  this  the  "  monstrous  image 
of  an  infinite  beast."  Happily  !  But  now 
a  pantheistic  vision,  not  without  resemblance 
to  the  Bhagavat  Gita,  though  wanting  its 
tender  pity,  closes  the  scene.  Is  it  a  vision  of 
Something  or  of  Nothing  ?  The  seer  himself 
could  not  tell ;   nor  can  we. 

Style  is  Kenan's  unfailing  miracle.  By  their 
cunning  design,  bold  excursions  into  Chaos, 
attacks  on  vulgar  democracy,  and  even  by  their 
sadness,  the  Dialogues  won  fresh  glory  for  the 
dissident  from  every  school.  But  when  he 
talked  of  his  "omnipotent  biologist"  in  the  hear- 
ing of  men  like  Theophile  Gautier,  Homeric 
laughter  greeted  him,  nor  could  he  help  join- 
ing in  it.  The  old  metaphysicians,  it  would 
seem,  were  not  so  grotesque  in  their  wild  flights 
as  the  latest  amateur  of  science.  Before  many 
years  they  were  to  take  their  revenge.  By  and 
by  Renan  would  be  saying,  "  Let  us  not  make 
haste  to  arrive  at  the  Truth.  Who  knows 
whether  it  may  not  be  something  melancholy?" 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher   211 

The  former  dogmatist,  who  had  put  his  faith  in 
religion  only  to  renounce  it,  now  went  away 
sad  from  the  oracle  of  science  after  giving  it 
a  trial.  He  wrapt  himself  round  in  illusion, 
took  the  most  comfortable  stall  in  the  theatre, 
and  gently  applauded  until,  for  him  at  any  rate, 
the  play  was  played  out.  M.  Seailles  pictures 
him  as  one  that,  from  his  days  at  the  seminary, 
had  "  lived  in  a  mental  intoxication."  It  is  very 
well  said,  and  for  an  epigram  it  is  true.  Curi- 
osity, observed  Renan,  reflecting  on  his  own 
tastes,  will  be  always  an  entertainment,  even  if 
this  world  should  turn  out  to  be  nothing  but 
the  dream  of  a  sickly  God. 

For  a  moment,  however,  in  these  Dialogues 
he  put  on  the  sable  cloak  of  Schopenhauer. 
He  did  what  in  him  lay  to  be  discontented  with 
existence  and  to  rail  at  the  Supreme.  But  the 
iron  had  not  entered  deep  enough  into  his 
soul.  A  man  who  prospered  evermore  as 
years  went  on,  whose  versatility  afforded  him 
boundless  amusement,  and  whose  public  was 
the  whole  of  educated  Europe,  admiring 
even  when  it  was  most  critical,  must  have 
been   haughtier   than   Diogenes    if   he  did  not 


2  12  Renan 

enjoy    the     sunshine     which     his     Alexander 
allowed  him. 

Travel  was  always  his  delight.  In  1874 
he  took  his  wife  to  Lugano,  Venice,  Mantua. 
A  year  later,  in  August  1875,  he  visited 
Sicily,  attending  the  scientific  congress  at 
Palermo  and  racing,  as  he  said,  in  a  head- 
long course  over  the  island,  being  everywhere 
received  with  speeches  and  what  the  news- 
papers call  ovations.  He  took  it  all  very  kindly. 
The  clergy  themselves  were  polite  to  him,  and 
science  won  their  applause.  From  Messina 
he  went  on  to  Naples,  making  pleased  acquaint- 
ance with  Ischia,  the  charming  islet  of  this 
self-styled  Prospero,  where  he  spent  several  of 
his  summer  holidays.  Famous  but  rheumatic, 
middle-aged  yet  growing  light-hearted,  he  de- 
livered at  Amsterdam  in  1877  the  comme- 
morative address  on  Spinoza.  Next  year  he 
visited  Constance,  Innsbruck,  and  Venice.  From 
Florence  he  despatched  a  curious  letter  to 
Berthelot,  in  which  he  tells  his  friend  that  the 
rivalry  of  nations  will  prove  not  less  mischievous 
than  did  in  former  times  the  intrigues  of  dynas- 
ties ;  that  patriotism  after  this  fashion  will  not 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    213 


last  fifty  years ;  and  that  all  is  vanity  except 
science.  "  Even  art,"  he  concludes,  "  begins 
to  seem  rather  empty.  My  impressions  of 
twenty-five  years  ago  have  a  touch  of  childish- 
ness on  them.  At  the  point  of  view  that  we 
have  attained,  no  picture  can  teach  us  any- 
thing. In  short,  these  things  were  once  living, 
and  that  must  suffice." 

Persevering,  not  to  say  ambitious,  he  had  be- 
come member  of  the  French  Institute,  Hebrew 
professor,  an  author  second  to  none,  by  sheer 
hard  work,  tact  and  daring,  and  by  a  politic 
though  not  servile  attendance  on  the  chiefs  in 
these  various  departments.  He  knew  every- 
body that  was  worth  knowing  in  Paris.  He 
served  the  College  de  France  with  zeal  tem- 
pered by  discretion,  and  was  much  liked  for  his 
invariable  kindness,  which  did  not  prevent  him 
from  being  firm  or  even  unyielding  on  the  fit 
occasion.  His  courtesy,  which  he  attributes  to 
St.  Sulpice,  made  him  a  flatterer  in  conversation, 
whatever  the  subject,  provided  that  certain 
views  of  his  own  were  not  assailed.  For  Renan 
had  his  prejudices,  and  only  the  simple-minded 
were  taken  in  by  his  favourite  expression,  "  \'ou3 


2  14  Renan 

avez  mille  fois  raison,  Monsieur."  He  greatly- 
disliked  the  reigning  schools  of  literature  and 
painting  in  France  ;  but  his  opposition  was  not 
violent,  though  it  grew  rather  than  diminished 
as  the  ugly  Realist  flaunted  his  glaring  or  un- 
clean exhibitions  at  every  salon  and  on  every 
bookstall,  with  shameless  impudence. 

Praising  the  bewigged  seventeenth  century, 
setting  up  Cousin  for  a  model  of  grace  and 
measure  when  affectation  was  the  order  of  the 
day,  this  literary  Girondin  gave  intolerable 
offence  to  Goncourt,  Gautier,  Zola — men  in 
their  several  ways  Jacobins  who  would  have 
guillotined  Louis  Quatorze.  By  instinct  he 
had  felt  long  ago  that  to  speak  with  commenda- 
tion of  Port  Royal  and  the  Jansenists  was  ex- 
cellent policy.  He  did  so,  yet  what  could  be 
less  to  his  liking  than  the  sad-browed  features 
of  Pascal,  or  St.  Cyran's  cast-iron  dogmas  ? 
Now  he  had  his  reward.  Among  his  friends 
who  leaned  to  that  sterner  view  was  M.  de  Sacy, 
son  of  the  well  known  Oriental  scholar.  And 
to  the  influence  of  this  gentle  Jansenist,  as  we 
learn,  he  owed  the  decorated  coat  which  all 
French  men  of  letters  rate  as  highly  as  English 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher   215 

dukes  rate  the  Garter.  On  April  3,  1879,  he 
read  himself  into  the  French  Academy. 

Believers  were  scandalized  at  this  public 
recognition  of  a  man  whose  talents  had  been 
spent  in  undermining  the  Gospel.  Dupanloup, 
Bishop  of  Orleans,  and  his  early  benefactor, 
gave  up  his  chair  as  an  Academician.  There 
was  an  outcry  almost  as  loud  as  when  the  Lije 
of  Jesus  had  first  appeared.  But  honours,  in  a 
Republic  now  decidedly  turning  from  the  toler- 
ant traditions  of  1848  to  Secularist  principles, 
were  destined  for  men  who,  like  Renan,  could 
give  it  lustre  by  their  adhesion,  however  quali- 
fied. His  nomination  to  the  Academy  was 
among  the  spoils  torn  from  Conservatives  on 
that  fatal  Sixteenth  of  May,  which  marked  the 
last  failure  of  the  Bourbons  to  conquer  France. 
He  was  no  democrat.  But  in  the  motley  array 
of  opponents  to  ancient  Christendom,  to  priest, 
altar,  and  revelation,  he  bore  a  standard,  far- 
shining  as  it  moved.  No  one  could  mistake  its 
device,  few  as  they  might  be  who  were  able  to 
read  it  distinctly. 

An  air  of  supreme  satisfaction,  which  only 
just  escapes  the  note  of  fatuity,  reigns  over 


2  1 6  Renan 

his  inaugural  address  from  the  arm-chair 
lately  occupied  by  Claude  Bernard.  It  is  a 
custom  which  often  leads  to  situations  trying  or 
ludicrous  that  the  new  Academician  shall  praise 
the  deceased  who  has  obligingly  made  way  for 
him.  That  duty  Renan  fulfilled  in  a  speech  of 
singular  dexterity,  in  a  style  clear  and  strong, 
adapted  to  the  subject,  while  he  was  more 
than  commonly  moved  by  a  career  which, 
beginning  like  his  own,  in  poverty,  had  been 
exposed  to  trials  far  longer.  He  made  light  of 
Bernard's  confusion  in  thought  when  that 
iEsculapius  attempted  to  pass  beyond  experi- 
ment and  fell  into  a  sort  of  metaphysics.  The 
well-worn  axioms  of  Renan's  Hegelian  system 
danced  their  minuet  once  more  ;  contradiction 
the  mother  of  truth ;  morals  a  lighthouse 
with  revolving  signals ;  the  ideal  and  the 
real,  spheres  that  do  not  touch  ;  yet  we  are 
invited  to  conclude  that  infinite  benevolence 
made  the  world  and  guides  it  onward. 

Can  we  be  surprised  if  plain  men  and  acute 
women  found  this  whirlwind  of  atoms  rather 
provoking  ?  Renan  sighed  over  the  severity 
of  human  creatures  towards  one  another.     He 


EcclesiasteSy  or  the  Preacher    217 


was  not  apologizing  for  what  he  had  written  ; 
yet  to  those  who  possess  the  "  sentiment  of 
affirmation,"  as  Madame  Daudet  so  admirably 
termed  it,  this  nerveless,  effeminate  resolution 
of  all  truths  into  the  vague,  must  have  appeared 
more  dangerous  than  the  Lije  of  Jesus  itself. 
It  was  indifference  cultivated  as  a  fine  art  ; 
and  how  could  nations  or  individuals  live 
on  such  a  Yea  and  Nay  ?  Voltaire,  in  com- 
parison, was  tonic.  But  Voltaire's  eyes  would 
have  gleamed  when,  with  delicate  mockery, 
the  new  member  told  his  associates  that  even 
in  their  delays  they  were  just.  "  One  arrives 
in  your  assembly,"  said  he,  "  at  the  age  of 
Ecclesiastes,  a  charming  age,  most  proper 
to  serene  cheerfulness,  when,  after  laborious 
youth,  one  begins  to  perceive  that  all  is  vanity, 
but  that  many  a  vain  thing  ought  to  be  thor- 
oughly enjoyed." 

He  prided  himself  on  being  a  very  clubable 
man.  Such,  in  fact,  he  was.  Good  nature 
sustained  by  success,  philosophic  disdain,  and 
nerves  not  irritated  by  his  dedication  to 
scholarship,  made  him  welcome  at  every  meet- 
ing of  the  Forty,  a  guest  much  sought  after  in 


2  1 8  Renan 

drawing-rooms.  He  was,  in  short,  Caliban 
to  look  upon,  but  Ariel  when  he  opened  his 
lips. 

Not  without  a  sense  of  mischief,  he  drew  atten- 
tion to  the  contrast  between  his  genius  and 
his  outward  man  which,  at  every  turn,  gave 
so  peculiar  an  attraction  to  what  he  said  and  did. 
He  became  his  own  jester,  shaking  his  bells  and 
cracking  his  whip  about  him  gracefully.  He 
called  himself  "  un  pretre  manque,"  whom  the 
secular  dress  would  never  fit.  The  public  did 
its  best  to  spoil  Renan  ;  but  he,  though  playing 
down  to  it  like  a  finished  actor,  kept  in  ironical 
reserve  the  principles  that  he  had  long  ago 
enunciated.  Great  writers,  it  had  been  said, 
could  only  deal  with  the  public  as  if  it  were  a 
child  ;  not  so,  he  replied,  you  must  deal  with 
it  as  a  woman.  His  method  was,  in  appearance, 
flattering  ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that  when  he 
sparkled,  and  smiled,  and,  in  a  glittering  phrase, 
denied  the  existence  of  evil,  he  was  throwing 
into  his  part  a  dramatic  fervour  that  vanished 
as  soon  as  the  curtain  fell.  Unlike  Voltaire  in 
so  many  ways,  he  was  like  him  thus  far  ;  the 
habit  of  persiflage  alternated  with  a  real  and 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    2i() 

deep  sense  of  insecurity  before  the  unknown. 
Victor  Hugo  might  have  labelled  Renan, 
during  his  last  twelve  or  fourteen  years,  as 
"  rhomme  qui  rit  "  ;  it  became  his  rubric,  his 
Leitmotif ;  and,  certainly,  a  moral  dissolution 
was  setting  in. 

If  we  have  not  marked  his  three  stages 
already,  let  us  mark  them  now.  Religion, 
founded  on  reasoning,  had  passed  away  ;  science 
could  not  establish  the  moral  order  ;  perhaps 
the  frivolous  were  in  the  right.  God,  the  soul, 
virtue,  were  "  good  old  words,  rather  heavy- 
sided,"  which  men  might  use  until  they  in- 
vented better.  To  be  sure  about  them  was 
to  proclaim  oneself  a  possible  dupe.  When 
Pasteur,  who  took  them  seriously,  ventured  to 
hope  that  among  the  French  Academicians 
they  might  still  claim  a  refuge,  Renan  warned 
him  that  he  was  expecting  too  much.  Pasteur 
said,  in  his  devout,  scientific  way,  "  He  that 
affirms  the  infinite,  heaps  up  in  that  statement 
more  of  the  supernatural  than  all  the  miracles 
of  all  religions."  His  polite  but  inflexible 
adversary  answered,  "  You  go  too  far.  Mon- 
sieur."    Littre,  whom  Pasteur  succeeded  (and 


2  20  Renan 

who  died  a  Christian)  had  shown  that  miracles 
do  not  happen.  But  Littre,  he  granted,  was 
resigned  to  the  inexorable  laws  of  Nature  ; 
while  Renan  looked  upon  death  as  an  outrage, 
philosophy  as  a  deception,  and  could  not  lay- 
aside  these  bitter  thoughts. 

To  console  himself,  he  fell  back  on  his  recol- 
lection of  the  days  that  were  no  more.  He 
would  write  his  Reminiscences  of  Touth.  More- 
over, could  he  not,  by  means  of  a  volatile  spirit, 
evaporate  into  dramas  the  philosophical  Dia- 
logues, where  all  things  might  be  hinted  but 
nothing  affirmed  ?  And  since  he  had  ex- 
plained how  Christianity  sprang  up,  without 
calling  on  any  but  natural  influences  to  ac- 
count for  it,  there  was  the  History  of  Israel 
awaiting  his  hand,  to  be  dealt  with  on  similar 
terms.  These  exercises  did  not  fill  up  all 
his  days.  In  1882  he  was  chosen  President  of 
the  Asiatic  Society  ;  two  years  later  he  became 
Administrator  of  the  College  de  France.  He 
delivered  amusing  speeches  at  the  Breton 
dinner,  which  was  held  near  the  railway-station 
of  Mont  Parnasse.  He  accepted  an  invitation 
from  the  Felibres.  or  Proven9al  Society.  When 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher   2  2  i 


the  Prix  Montyon  were  to  be  distributed,  his 
allocution  was  in  request.  And  at  the  breaking 
up  of  the  Lycee  Louis  le  Grand  he  bestowed 
their  wreaths  on  the  young  competitors,  with  a 
speech  wherein  he  undertook  to  refute  the 
pessimism  of  Jouffroy  and  of  the  day,  which 
was  always  threatening  to  refute  his  own  philo- 
sophy and  to  justify  religion. 

Few  events  in  a  course  now  singularly  smooth 
can  have  given  him  more  pleasure  than  the 
proposal  which  he  accepted  from  the  Hibbert 
trustees  to  lecture  at  Langham  Place  in  April, 
1 880.  He  crossed  the  Channel,  and  found  Lon- 
don somewhat  like  a  "  big  village  admirably  clean 
and  well  kept,"  while  he  judged  South  Ken- 
sington to  be  the  very  pattern  of  an  opulent 
city.  The  enlightened  circles  which  opened 
their  doors  to  him  were  the  most  charming  in  the 
world.  Progress  in  England,  he  told  Berthe- 
lot,  was  due  to  the  upper  classes,  in  great  part 
Liberal  ;  the  masses  were  asleep  ;  Church 
and  State  had  no  fear  of  attack.  All  this 
reminded  him  of  the  French  eighteenth 
century  before  the  Revolution.  His  own 
France,  just  then,  was  committing  an  "  enor- 


222  Renan 

mous  offence  "  against  the  principles  of  free- 
dom by  driving  out  the  religious  orders,  and 
Englishmen  did  not  approve.  M.  Berthelot 
answered,  not  without  asperity,  that  English- 
men were  talking  at  their  ease  ;  if  they  ever 
had  Jesuits  to  deal  with  again,  they  would  be, 
as  their  foreign  politics  demonstrated,  hard, 
brutal,  and  illiberal.  But  he  admitted  that 
Jules  Ferry  had  not  gone  about  his  task  in  the 
right  way. 

Renan's  lectures,  which  dwelt  on  the  part 
taken  by  Rome  in  founding  Christianity,  were 
delivered  to  a  choice  audience,  in  accents  so 
clear  and  in  a  French  so  classical,  that  no  syl- 
lable of  them  could  be  lost.  Their  tone,  con- 
sidering where  the  lecturer  stood,  was  perhaps 
a  calculated  irony.  For  they  made  much  of 
the  Petrine  elements,  the  Papal  tradition,  and 
what  we  might  describe  as  the  Catholic  in-^ 
fluences,  to  which,  in  Renan's  judgment,  Christ- 
endom owed  its  lasting  form.  On  these  things 
whoever  has  dipped  into  his  volumes  will  need 
no  instruction.  The  Lectures  are  a  pleasing 
mosaic,  fragments  not  unskilfully  taken  from 
works  already  in  print ;  but  they  hardly  deserve 


EcclesiasteSy  or  the  Preacher   223 

a  separate  place  among  his  writings  as  Confer- 
ences in  England. 

The  "  masses  "  took  little  heed  of  an  un- 
believer who  could  not  speak  their  language. 
Max  Miiller  asked  him  to  Oxford,  where  he 
spent  one  Sunday.  He  was  enchanted  with  all 
that  he  saw,  though  compelled  to  hear  a  sermon 
in  St.  Mary's  and  to  be  present  at  an  "  inter- 
minable evensong."  His  reflections  to  Ber- 
thelot  paint  the  man  amusingly.  "  Oh,  the 
curious  city  !  "  he  breaks  out ;  "  you  must  really 
see  it.  It  is  the  oddest  relic  of  the  past,  the 
type  of  death  in  life.  Every  college  is  an 
earthly  Paradise,  but  a  Paradise  forsaken.  You 
would  say  that  life  had  gone  elsewhere  ;  but 
there  is  Paradise — planted,  swept,  weeded  for 
those  who  have  left  it.  A  poor  outcome 
altogether;  a  mere  humanist  and  quite  clerical 
training,  given  to  a  gilded  youth  who  attend 
choir  in  surplices ;  an  utter  absence  of  the  scien- 
tific spirit.  A  college  may  possess  a  million 
(of  francs)  as  yearly  income  ;  the  '  fellows '  suc- 
ceed in  proving  that  if  they  are  to  keep  their 
lawn  in  order,  as  the  statutes  oblige,  they 
must  dispense  with  undergraduates,  and  they 


2  24  Renan 

spend  the  revenues  hunting  or  shooting  in 
all  parts  of  the  world."  He  'was  alluding  to 
All  Souls ;  but  he  did  not  suspect  that  Queen's 
College,  a  few  yards  down  the  High  Street,  was 
then  producing  an  Assyrian  scholar,  whose  Light 
from  the  Monuments  would  contribute  with 
other  English  discoveries  to  make  no  small 
portion  of  his  own  History  of  Israel  obsolete 
in  not  many  years. 

His  holidays  and  his  seldom  intermitted 
rheumatism,  which  was  complicated  by  weak- 
ness of  the  heart,  took  him  to  Plombieres  in  the 
rainy  August  of  1880.  There  he  revised  the 
Water  of  Youth,  a  sequel  to  Caliban,  written  in 
the  frivolous  vein  which  he  mistook  for  humour 
and  genius.  We  will  touch  upon  it  when  we 
come  to  speak  of  his  Dramas.  He  was  also 
translating  Ecclesiastes  on  a  new  plan  ;  and 
that  book,  which  many  have  thought  among 
the  saddest  ever  due  to  an  inspired  teacher,  he 
discovered  to  be  amiable  and  amusing.  These 
are  not  precisely  its  qualities ;  but  Renan,  who 
could  never  forget  himself,  now  saw  his  image 
and  likeness  in  every  work  which  he  admired. 

We  need  scarcely  undertake  to  analyse    his 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    22  ^ 

version  of  Koheleth,  or  to  combat  his  Epicurean 
approval  of  a  good  sense  which  passed  by  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets  into  its  garden  enclosed, 
there  to  enjoy  life  at  leisure.  But  certain 
pages  have  attained  great  celebrity,  as  betoken- 
ing the  attitude  which  this  veteran  student  of 
Hebraism  took  up  towards  the  Israelite  whom 
we  now  welcome  within  our  gates. 

Renan  portrays,  besides  the  enthusiast  or 
fanatic  who  heads  revolutions — Lassalle,  Karl 
Marx,  and  their  kind — the  Sadducee,  or  man  of 
the  world,  animated  like  his  prophetic  brother 
with  unbounded  confidence  in  himself  —  the 
mood  called  tikva,  which  is  trust  in  destiny,  in- 
solent and  unconquerable — yet  careless  about 
the  coming  of  any  Messiah.  And  in  this 
triumphant  money-changer,  who  has  inherited 
whatever  his  people  could  grasp,  Koheleth  lives 
again.  He  is  pre-eminently  the  "  modern 
Jew." 

Between  him  and  Heinrich  Heine,  says 
Renan,  there  is  but  a  door  to  open.  After 
two  thousand  years,  behold  him  an  accom- 
plished worldling  ;  he  has  no  prejudices,  either 
feudal  or  dynastic  ;   he   takes  possession  of  a 

15 


2  26  R 


enan 


universe  which  he  has  not  made.  It  is  for  him 
that  Clovis  and  the  Franks  have  conquered. 
He  is,  indeed,  no  democrat.  His  smooth  skin, 
nervous  susceptibility,  scorn  of  manual  labour, 
make  of  him  a  noble  ;  yet  he  is  not  given  to 
warlike  feats.  Though  he  carries  an  air  of 
distinction,  he  can  stoop  to  the  ground  ;  and 
therein  he  stamps  himself  of  the  middle  class. 
Chivalry  and  asceticism  are  alike  far  from  him. 
"  He  has  reached  the  perfect  wisdom,"  con- 
cludes this  portrait-painter  in  a  half-mocking 
aside,  "  which  is  to  enjoy  peacefully,  amid 
works  of  delicate  art  and  images  of  exhausted 
pleasure,  the  fruit  for  which  he  has  laboured. 
Surprising  proof  that  all  is  vanity  !  Go  to, 
then  ;  trouble  the  world,  compel  your  God 
to  expire  on  a  cross,  brave  all  tortures,  set 
your  country  on  fire  half-a-dozen  times, 
insult  tyrants,  throw  down  idols,  that  you  may 
die  of  spinal  disease,  in  a  luxurious  mansion 
of  the  Champs  Elysees,  lamenting  that  life 
is  short  and  pleasure  fugitive.  Vanity  of 
vanities !  " 

We  have  all  come  across  that  modern  Jew, 
says  Rcnan  ;  he  means  in  Paris,  under  the  Third 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    2  2"] 


Republic.  But  was  there  not,  in  the  critic 
whom  we  watch  as  he  transforms  himself  into 
a  tired  satirist,  more  than  one  resemblance  to 
Koheleth  ?  Riches  he  did  not  seek,  indeed. 
When  Madame  Renan  talked  anxiously  of  house- 
hold cares,  he  answered,  smiling,  that  money  had 
never  paid  their  house  a  call ;  and  we  may  be 
sure  that  the  volume  he  studied  least  was  his 
bank-book.  He  professed  to  be  a  minor  in 
worldly  affairs,  under  the  tutorship  of  M. 
Michel  Levy — Hebrew  by  his  name — with 
whose  rendering  of  accounts  he  never  quar- 
relled. His  ambition,  from  a  child,  had  been 
to  write  ;  he  did  not  imagine  his  thoughts  could 
be  sold  in  the  market.  His  various  appoint- 
ments brought  an  income  which,  even  when 
we  add  to  it  his  literary  gains,  appears  to  have 
been  much  smaller  than  we  should  have  argued 
from  so  immense  a  reputation.  He  did,  of 
course,  enjoy  his  modest  comforts  ;  he  travelled 
for  amusement ;  and  in  his  last  years  he  made 
a  country-house  of  the  Breton  manor  called 
Rosmapamon,  close  to  delightful  woods,  down 
by  the  sea  which  his  ancestors  had  so  often 
sailed  over.     But  he  was  never  wealthy  ;  and 


2  2  8  Renan 

his  likeness  to  the  Israelite  now  in  fashion  must 
be    looked    for    elsewhere. 

When,  then,  he  declares  that  for  men 
such  as  the  "  Preacher,"  no  Messiah,  no  re- 
surrection, no  patriotism  held  out  a  lure, 
whom  is  he  describing  but  himself,  as 
books  and  conversations  report  him  ?  Who 
is  it  that  "  ought  to  be  impious,"  if  he 
obeyed  his  own  logic,  but  is  "  touchingly 
inconsequent,"  and  on  the  brink  of  Material- 
ism draws  back  ?  Who  is  the  amiable  sceptic, 
the  resigned  Schopenhauer,  so  much  beyond 
the  hero  of  German  drinking-bouts,  the  rea- 
soner  that  will  not  cleave  superstitiously  to  any 
inference,  the  man  that  loves  life  though  he 
sees  through  it,  and  is  an  exquisite  person 
with  manners  which  one  cannot  resist  ? 
Where  should  we  seek  him  that  "  could  not 
be  led  astray  by  the  delusion  of  the  super- 
natural "  ;  that  was  "  supple  yet  proud  towards 
the  powers  that  be  "  ;  that  scorned  democracy 
because  he  held  by  heredity,  and  that  detested 
conscription,  the  barracks,  the  battle-field  ? 
Who,  again,  could  work,  and  enjoy,  and  expect 
no   to-morrow,   and   find   his  Heaven   in   the 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    2  2C) 

beautiful  things  of  which  the  world  was  full  ? 
Whether  such  a  one  answers  to  the  name  of 
Solomon,  or  Heine,  or  Renan,  we  know  him  to 
be  a  disenchanted  idealist,  whose  voice,  if  it 
sounded  alone,  would  be  fatal  to  the  best  that 
is  in  us. 

But  the  sceptic  lives  on  a  capital  stored  up 
during  the  days  when  he  believed.  He  is  a 
philosopher  on  half-pay.  All  that  makes  Renan 
attractive  came  to  him  from  his  ancestors  in 
Brittany,  his  teachers  in  St.  Sulpice,  while  the 
never-ending  debate  between  ideals  which  he 
knew  not  how  to  reconcile — a  debate  carried  on 
in  public  by  this  accomplished  tragi-comedian 
— threw  over  each  of  his  volumes  the  uncer- 
tainty that  men  hate  in  life,  but  find  enter- 
taining in  literature.  At  the  stage  where  he 
now  was,  keeping,  as  he  remarked,  a  system  by 
double  entry,  to  teach  straight  on  had  grown 
impossible.  He  could  only  exchange  confi- 
dences with  his  readers,  talk  of  old  times,  gently 
criticize  when  the  Republicans  indulged  their 
appetite  for  adventure  in  Tunis  or  Tonquin, 
and  give  his  Reminiscences  to  the  thousands 
who  had  seldom  travelled  farther  in  their  ex- 


230  Renan 

ploration  of  him  than  extracts  from  his  most 
notorious  volume  would  permit.  Autobio- 
graphy is  fascinating,  and  here  was  a  past 
master  in  the  craft,  though  always  on  his 
own  terms. 

The  Reminiscences  of  My  Youth  appeared  as 
a  complete  book  in  1883.  "  A  race,"  he  said 
afterwards,  "  lives  for  ever  on  its  recollections 
of  childhood."  So  he  would  live  himself,  and 
through  him  the  Bretons  who  were  in  him 
summed  up  as  their  incarnate  genius.  This  was 
his  thought,  almost  his  expression.  No  French 
biography,  since  Chateaubriand  published  his 
Memoirs  from  the  Tomb,  had  created  a  stir  equal 
to  the  sensation  which  now  followed.  Twenty- 
two  editions  in  half  the  number  of  years  did 
not  exhaust  a  demand,  everywhere  felt  among 
the  cultivated,  for  pages  that  might  justify 
Kenan's  admirers  or  accusers,  both  eager  to 
learn  his  secret. 

A  volume,  indeed,  of  Memoirs  as  the  word 
is  understood  at  Mudie's,  Renan  neither  could 
nor  would  have  given  them.  For  dates, 
scenes,  incidents,  the  many-coloured  story 
wliich    those   who    have    played    great    parts 


Ecc/esiastes^  o?^  the  Preacher    231 

dress  up,  and  leave  to  be  published  twenty 
years  after  their  funeral,  he  had  no  taste. 
His  education  at  the  seminary  made  him 
what  he  had  proved  to  be  as  an  historian, 
whether  he  was  rendering  St.  Paul,  Marcus 
Aurelius,  or  himself,  in  his  faultless  French. 
Always  interested,  and  interesting,  he  was  yet 
detached  from  his  subject.  Now  the  virtue  of 
detachment  would  be  fatal  to  Rousseau ;  it  for- 
bids self-portraiture  except  from  a  religious 
point  of  view  ;  and  Renan  never  had  been,  as 
the  spiritual  writers  name  it,  an  interior  man. 
He  looked  at  the  world  with  his  own  eyes,  but 
the  vision  was  not  directed  to  feelings  ;  it 
sought  after  facts  as  a  clue  to  ideas.  Upon 
this  moral  quality  the  training  which  he 
received  in  abstract  systems,  where  philoso- 
phers themselves  appeared  only  as  a  set  of 
syllogisms  to  be  sustained  or  demolished, 
could  not  fail  to  react.  And  so  the  pictur- 
esque died  out  for  want  of  colour,  and  that 
which  M.  Bourget  has  well  termed  the  violent 
energy  of  life  was  exhausted  by  an  asceticism 
of  the  imagination  far  more  effective  than 
hair-shirt  or  knotted  cords  would  have  been. 


232  Reitan 

From  that  medium  Renan,  though  struggling 
valiantly,  never  got  quite  free.  Though  others 
could  not  have  written  about  his  first  years 
unless  he  had  shown  the  way,  we  must  agree 
with  Turgenieff  that  he  was  never  meant 
for  a  story-teller.  He  was,  indeed,  a  being 
apart.  Many  Liberals  felt  it  and  did  not 
like  him  ;  the  orthodox  were  sensible  of  it  in 
another  way — they  shuddered  as  at  an  apostate 
priest.  He  knew  himself  how  little  he  could 
compete  with  genuine  poets,  with  Alfred  de 
Musset,  for  example,  who  is  here  suggested 
by  force  of  contrast,  or  with  Heine,  who  was 
much  too  sensuous  ever  to  be  a  Koheleth 
meditating  upon  the  fatal  sameness  of  things. 

Thus  the  Reminiscences  are  not  psychology,  as 
are  Rousseau's  Confessions.  But  they  give  the 
history  of  an  idea.  Calm,  with  a  tranquillity 
born  of  science,  to  which  persons  only  stand 
for  symbols,  not  for  beating  hearts  and 
passionate  ecstasies  of  joy  or  sorrow,  they  tell 
how  the  Christian  became  an  unbeliever,  and 
in  the  voice  we  catch  no  sound  of  tears.  "  A 
curious  experience,"  the  writer  seems  to  say, 
"  of  which   I   happened   to   be   the   subject." 


ERNEST    KENAN,   IS92. 
h'roiii  the  painting  by  Bonnal 


Ecc/esiasteSy  or  the  Preacher    233 

He  dissects  a  corpse  that  had  once,  in  some 
previous  avatar,  been  animated  by  his  own 
soul.  This  high  impersonality,  shocking  to 
the  devout,  is  proper  in  a  dissecting-room. 
And  it  would  be  superfluous  to  imagine  that 
Rcnan  kept  back  any  part  of  the  demonstra- 
tion, so  far  as  he  had  made  it.  However 
mistaken,  he  was  surely  sincere.  If  we  grant 
that  moral  issues  ought  to  be  decided  by 
methods  like  these,  all  the  anguish,  fear,  and 
poignant  grief  which  have  accompanied 
spiritual  wrestlings  in  other  men,  who  dreaded 
lest  they  should  lose  their  immortal  treasure, 
may  be  put  aside  ;  they  are  unscientific.  The 
problem  of  eternity  is  seen  to  be  a  question 
for  grammarians  ;  not  "  What  shall  I  do  to 
be  saved  ?  "  but  "  How  do  I  read  ?  "  sums  up 
and  shapes  the  whole  controversy. 

Plausible  as  such  a  method  appears — for  is 
it  not  objective  and  impartial  ? — the  deeper 
sense  of  mankind  refuses  to  act  upon  it.  Men 
will  go  by  custom,  inspiration,  example — 
nay,  by  simple  guess-work — rather  than  trust 
themselves  to  the  "  small  conjectural  sciences," 
which,  according  to    Rcnan,  make   our  books 


2  34  Renan 

of  history  and  are  themselves  unmade  in  the 
process.  "  The  regret  of  my  life,"  he  writes, 
"  is  that  I  chose  to  engage  in  researches 
which  never  can  be  certified  ;  which  must 
ever  turn  on  interesting  considerations  about 
a  vanished  reality."  The  world,  he  thinks, 
will  in  a  hundred  years  be  forgetting  its 
past.  Do  we  want  to  know  the  secret  of 
existence  ?  Let  us  consult  astronomy  and 
general  physiology,  and  exchange  the  prophets 
for  Darwin.  How  wc  are  to  establish  on  a 
doctrine  of  evolution  thus  restricted,  any 
morals  but  those  of  profit  and  loss  in  view  of 
the  species,  we  shall  not  learn  from  our 
teacher.  But  yet  we  know  that  the  ideals  of 
life  must  somehow  find  their  justification  ; 
and  is  not  this  sufficient  evidence  that  he  has 
taken  the  wrong  path  ? 

His  Reminiscences^  which  begin  so  romanti- 
cally, and  yet  arc  not  a  fiction,  would  possess 
little  charm  had  his  scientific  method  been  a 
true  one.  It  is  the  soul  for  which  we  are 
concerned  ;  the  experiment  is  fraught  with 
issues  beyond  the  ken  of  star-gazers  and  general 
physiologists.     When  he   enters   the  lodge  at 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    235 


Issy  of  "  la  Reine  Margot,"  he  bears  in  his 
heart'something  which  dies  before  he  leaves  it 
again,  or  which  he  murders — his  faith,  which 
had  lighted  up  the  unseen  and  made  it  visible 
as  a  divine  world.  However  it  comes  about, 
he  is  by  that  loss  everlastingly  poor  ;  though 
he  should  exclaim,  as  he  does,  with  the  Italian 
poet,  that  to  be  wrecked  in  such  an  ocean  is 
pleasant  to  him.  The  shipwreck  cannot  be  de- 
nied ;  henceforth  he  floats  on  a  raft,  made 
from  its  drifting  spars.  He  is  resigned,  but 
still  he  floats,  without  a  compass,  over  seas 
that  promise  him  no  haven. 

We  cannot,  then,  forbear  to  agree  with  M. 
Seailles  when  he  tells  us  that,  "  The  history  of 
one  who  was  among  the  brilliant  intellects  of 
our  time  leaves  a  profound  impression  of 
sadness.  From  the  heroism  of  the  stripling,  as 
he  throws  himself  resolutely  into  the  life  of 
thought  ;  from  his  high  ambitions  when  he 
composed  the  Future  of  Science,  impatient  to 
conquer  the  truth  which  sounded  for  liim 
alone  its  proud  flourish  of  trumpets,  to  the 
submission  of  old  age,  defeated  by  life,  finding 
pleasure  in  its  very  abasement,  the  fall  is  great 


236  Renan 

indeed.  That  Renan  should  have  been  under- 
stood, accepted,  flattered,  only  when  he  fell, 
can  make  no  difference.  Let  who  will  admire 
this  vacillating  mind,  this  impotence  to  affirm, 
we  know  it  to  be  the  last  term  of  decadence.'' 
No  one  who  feels  kindly  towards  an  amiable 
spirit,  or  who  has  found  pleasure  in  his  capti- 
vating ways  of  speech,  but  will  be  grieved  on 
assenting  to  this  judgment.  Its  truth  may  be 
hidden  for  many  readers,  seeking  as  they  do 
literary  entertainment  at  the  cost  of  tragedy, 
and  delighted  with  Renan's  myrtle  and  jessa- 
mine, while  he  takes  them  round  his  perfumed 
garden.  But  even  the  enchanted  ass  of  Apu- 
leius  could  not  feed  exclusively  on  roses.  It 
would  seem  that  eternal  life  must  be  bought  at 
a  higher  price.  The  awkward  pensive  student 
holds  us  by  the  heartstrings  ;  when  he  gives  up 
his  vocation,  we  suffer  with  him  as  in  a  catas- 
trophe where  the  whole  man  succumbs.  But 
for  the  amused  spectator  of  his  own  early  strug- 
gles, we  are  affected  with  a  sense  of  pity  not 
altogether  free  from  disdain.  He  has  grasped 
at  everything  and  taken  nothing.  Yet  he 
does  not  perceive  that  his  hands  are  empty. 


Ecclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher   237 


Chateaubriand,  with  gifts  more  extraordi- 
nary, was  a  dissolute  rhetorician  ;  his  Memoirs^ 
though   superb   in   style,   cannot   furnish   the 
comparison  we  are  seeking  by  which  to  esti- 
mate a   more   modest,   not  a  less  important, 
biography.     If  character  be  our  aim,  we  might 
lay  these  Reminiscences  not  far  from  the  Words 
of  a  Believer^  and  dwell  on  the  fiery  zeal  which 
devoured  Lamennais,  the  calm  serenity  which 
tones  down  or  effaces  in  Renan  colours  that 
had  never  been  overcharged.     The  hackneyed 
word  la  nuance^  or  shading,  rises  to  our  lips 
when    we    contrast    his    subdued    atmosphere 
with  a  light  so  strong  that  it  blinds  its  adorer. 
But  character  is  rooted  in  principle,  and  the 
key   to   it   is   conscience.     Let   us   ask   again, 
therefore,  do  we  feel  that  conscience  is  but 
the  echo  of  our  own  voice,  or  is   the  voice  of 
God   to  which  we   must  hearken  ?      All,   we 
may   truly   say,    lies   there,    in   that   first   and 
deepest  of  distinctions.    To  judge  the  defence 
of  himself  which   Renan  puts  forward,  let  us 
take  another  and  an  opposite,  the  Apologia  of 
Cardinal  Newman. 

The  difference  goes  deeper  than  logic  ;    it 


238  Renan 

is  not  exhausted  by  writing  in  the  margin 
"  temperament  "  ;  for  it  holds  of  reason,  will, 
and  whatever  else  is  our  innermost,  our  real 
self.  To  Newman  the  world  outside  him 
brought  no  message  until  he  had  interpreted 
its  lines  from  within.  He  construed  it  in 
terms  of  personality,  yet  not  simply  his  own  ; 
experience  revealed  to  him  one  which  possessed 
the  attributes  of  Justice  and  Holiness,  which 
was  in  the  highest  degree  living  and  the  law  of 
all  things.  But  this  inward  vision  it  does  not 
appear  that  Renan  ever  enjoyed.  Amazing  as 
the  affirmation  sounds  to  us,  he  came  to  believe 
that  no  mind  greater  than  the  human  existed 
anywhere.  To  him,  therefore,  the  moral  law 
was  an  acquisition,  not  from  a  Divine  source, 
but  as  literally  manufactured  as  the  Code 
Napoleon  by  civic  wisdom.  Prayer,  when 
there  is  none  to  listen,  cannot  profit  much  ; 
and  so  far  from  the  thinker  being  less  than  the 
universe,  he  is  its  superior,  urging  it  forward 
to  a  perfection  it  could  never  reach  were  he 
not  driving  it,  the  only  Phoebus  Apollo  in  his 
chariot  of  the  sun.  What,  then,  is  religion  ? 
It  is  worship  of  the  higher,  ideal  self.     What  is 


Rcclesiastes^  or  the  Preacher    239 

conscience  ?  Surely  the  dream  of  a  shade. 
It  can  never  be  the  voice  of  a  God  who  has 
not  yet  begun  to  be.  Man  is  not  "  alone  with 
the  Alone,"  he  is  alone  with  himself. 

Hence  the  passionate  pilgrimage  of  Newman 
goes  by  prayer  and  self-discipline,  along  the 
way  of  the  cross,  to  a  truth  which  is  ever 
becoming  more  of  a  service,  and  which  ends 
in  a  concrete,  historical  revelation.  The 
Apologia  is  likewise  a  Theodicaea  ;  truly,  it 
justifies  the  ways  of  God  to  men.  It  vindi- 
cates the  Christian  creed  by  showing  how  we 
may  live  on  its  teaching.  The  conclusion  is 
highly  practical,  instant,  not  to  be  mistaken. 
In  the  rudest  of  language  it  would  be  con- 
vincing ;  in  the  most  refined  it  cannot  be 
more.  The  light  thus  gained  opens  a  view  into 
eternity  ;  it  is  the  seed  which  yields  a  harvest, 
and  is  equal  to  endless  developments.  It 
restores  the  inward  sense  of  things ;  it  accounts 
for  the  least  by  the  greatest  as  due  to  an  all- 
encompassing  design.  Having  overcome  the 
sting  of  death,  it  looks  forward  in  hope  to  life 
without  end.  And  this  would  be,  to  a  scientific 
mind,  its  justification. 


240  Renan 

Rcnan,  when  he  ceases  to  be  a  pilgrim,  can 
hope  no  longer.  He  commits  progress  to  the 
infinite  of  hazard,  which  from  Epicurus  to 
our  own  day  has  taken  the  dice-box  and  all  it 
contains  for  granted.  But  who  can  tell,  he 
inquires  elsewhere,  if  the  capital  of  which 
Nature  disposes  may  not  run  out  ?  Thus, 
said  a  French  wit,  he  leaves  his  ideal  at  the 
mercy  of  the  coal-measures.  To  sum  up  :  if 
chance  reigns,  how  shall  we  prophesy  ?  And 
if  it  does  not,  where  can  reason  pause  until  it 
grants  creative  Intelligence  ? 


Chapter  VIII 
LAST  DAYS,  DEATH,  AND  EPITAPH 

SUCH  were  the  notes  of  interrogation 
which  Renan  might  have  scattered 
over  his  unpretending  and,  to  so 
many,  delightful  little  book.  It  is  easy  to 
read  ;  we  shall  not,  however,  learn  its  meaning 
if  we  sunder  it  from  his  philosophic  dialogues 
and  dramas,  or  his  frequent  soliloquies,  which 
round  it  off  in  unexpected  fashion.  These 
are  commonly  bitter-sweet  ;  while  the  Remi- 
niscences put  on  the  tone  of  good  society, 
and  are  gay  and  genial.  At  no  time  could 
Renan  appropriate  to  himself  "  the  diabolic 
lucidity  of  Voltaire,  the  devouring  flame  of 
Diderot."  He  was  incapable  of  drawing 
scenes  or  showing  his  life  in  action.  He  did 
not  observe  in  order  to  narrate  ;  but  he  took 
a  moral  impression  which  passed  over  costume, 

241  J  5 


2^2  Renan 

figure,  attitude,  and  all  that  makes  a  picture 
as  not  to  his  purpose.  Landscape  he  saw  and 
loved.  For  people  he  had  not  the  eye  of  a 
painter,  though  he  knew,  none  better,  how 
they  stood  to  him  and  he  to  them.  Hence 
the  Reminiscences  are  written  in  a  key  of 
sentiment,  not  of  colour  ;  and  thus  we  learn 
why  they  were  eagerly  read,  like  the  Lije  of 
Jesus,  by  many  women  ;  for  in  literature 
sentiment  is  Eve's  Paradise,  where  she  listens 
to  the  serpent. 

Perhaps  we  have  now  arrived,  by  a  way  we 
were  not  looking  for,  at  an  explanation  of  the 
strangely  elusive  genius,  who  was,  beyond 
question,  more  subtle  than  any  freethinker 
among  his  contemporaries.  When  he  is  not 
scientific  he  becomes  sentimental ;  these  are 
the  positive  and  negative  poles  round  which 
the  current  of  his  being  circulates.  Sentiment 
defies  analysis  and  laughs  definition  to  scorn. 
It  may  clasp  the  universe,  calling  itself  cosmic 
emotion  ;  and  in  that  mood  Renan  employs 
the  language  of  piety  which,  in  strict  logic,  he 
ought  to  have  discarded.  Again,  it  may 
frankly    admit    the    limitations    of    physical 


Death  and  Kpitaph       243 


science,  turn  from  knowledge  to  passion,  and 
write  the  Abbess  of  Jouarre.  Instinct,  long 
kept  under,  may  claim  its  revenge.  The 
laggard  Cupid,  says  Madame  Darmesteter, 
with  an  allusion  to  this  last  book,  that 
flitted  round  the  hammock  in  which  Socrates 
lay  philosophizing  at  fifty-three,  provokes  a 
smile.  But  did  not  Renan,  with  unwonted 
lack  of  civility,  declare  in  his  Reminiscences 
that  "  the  more  a  man  increases  in  under- 
standing, so  much  the  more  does  he  seek  rest 
at  the  opposite  pole,  in  complete  ignorance, 
or  the  woman  who  is  nothing  but  herself  "  ? 
He  adds  prettily,  "  The  innocence  of  a  child 
who  knows  not  that  she  is  beautiful,  and  who 
sees  God  clear  as  day,  is  the  great  revelation 
of  the  ideal." 

So  the  wheel  has  turned  round.  He,  the 
stern  Jacob  wrestling  with  God's  angel,  full  of 
syllogisms  and  unpolished  school-terms,  confi- 
dent that  by  questioning  he  could  find  a  key 
to  every  door,  talks  like  a  mystic,  and  puts  love 
instead  of  knowledge.  True,  the  genuine 
mystic,  at  least  if  a  Christian,  denies  himself 
earthly  love  that  he  may  attain  the  heavenly  ; 


244  Re7tan 

while  with  advancing  years  Renan  bestowed 
a  plenary  indulgence  on  the  faults  of  youth, 
in  which  he  had  never  been  entangled.  Once 
he  had  spoken  severely  of  the  "  Gallic  spirit, 
vulgar,  prosaic,  without  elevation,  which  under- 
stands morality  as  the  art  of  getting  on." 
French  laughter,  French  ballads,  were  his 
abomination  ;  "  prurient  vice,  coquettish  im- 
propriety, making  evil  attractive — look,"  he 
said,  "  there  is  the  French  sin  far  excellence^ 
the  absurdity  which  a  Frenchman  thinks  to 
escape  by  his  easy  air  and  his  eternal  smile." 
He  loathed  Beranger,  who  was  the  poet  of  all 
these  ineptitudes.  "  Let  us  remember,"  he 
had  explained,  "  that  sadness  alone  is  the 
mother  of  great  things  !  "  The  frivolous,  the 
superficial  man  was  the  real  atheist. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  in  Renan's  earlier 
writings  we  may  light  upon  the  condemnation 
of  whatever  in  his  last  days  we  should  wish 
.  unwritten.  Himself  a  rare  example  of  hard 
work,  sober,  studious,  moderate,  decorous, 
whose  life  hid  nothing  of  which  he  need  be 
ashamed,  he  followed  after  the  multitude,  not 
to  sin  as  they  did,  but  in  flowery  phrases  to 


Death   and  Rpitaph       245 

condone  their  sinning.  He  affirmed,  on  this 
hand,  that  French  democracy  was  "  the  most 
energetic  dissolvent  of  virtue  the  world  had 
ever  seen."  And  on  that  he  spoke  an  apology 
for  intemperance,  loose  living,  and  the  Caliban 
who  personifies  the  triumphant  Republic. 
*'  As  a  piece  of  satire,  a  showing  up  of  the 
drunken  Helot,"  we  shall  be  told.  Not  in  any 
way.  Renan  is  quite  serious.  That  he  would 
not  choose  to  live  under  the  sway  of  Caliban 
we  knew  long  ago  ;  he  made  no  secret  of  it. 
Republicans,  when  true  to  principle,  are 
reformers ;  but  he  thinks  the  masses  cannot 
be  virtuous,  and  ought  to  be  amused.  Let 
them  drink  on  their  Saints'  days,  as  in  the 
'pardons  of  Brittany.  An  intoxicated  "  Sab- 
bat "  is  good  enough  for  them. 

This  Caliban,  with  its  sequel,  The  Water  of 
Touth,  leads  up  to  a  lugubrious  but  powerful 
imagination.  The  Priest  of  Nemi.  Unless  we 
turned  to  these  dramas,  we  should  hardly  be 
aware  of  a  certain  skill  which  Renan  possessed 
in  dialogue  ;  not  the  stage-repartee,  but  the 
cut  and  thrust  of  real  ideas  ;  neither  should 
we  be  able    fully  to   measure   the   "  frightful 


2^6  Renan 

incoherence "   that   a   golden   style   elsewhere 
conceals. 

He  has  made  very  free  with  Shakespeare. 
The  quaint  or  exquisite  creations  of  The  Tem- 
pest  are  not  to  be  looked  for  in  scenes  which 
border  on  pantomime,  or  in  types  so  transparent 
that  the  abstract  notion  out  of  which  they 
sprang  could  scarcely  be  more  foreign  to  flesh 
and  blood.  One  may  conjecture  that  Renan 
was  little  versed  in  English  books.  He  never 
quotes  from  them.  He  began,  but  could  not 
go  on  reading  Macaulay,  whom  Taine  thought 
superior  to  most  of  our  men  of  letters,  while 
to  M.  Brunetiere  he  seems  our  only  prose 
classic.  Shakespeare,  then,  may  be  left  out  of 
comparison,  luckily  for  Renan.  The  plays  are 
parables.  Prospero  is  modern  science,  analytic 
and  synthetic ;  Caliban  represents  drunken 
democracy  ;  the  Inquisitor,  baffled  by  freedom 
of  worship  and  unlicensed  printing — we  need 
not  ask  for  whom  he  stands  ;  while  the  musi- 
cian, Ariel,  is  religion  or  Idealism.  The  stage, 
Milan,  may  be  France,  Paris,  any  centre  of 
revolutionary  strife.  Prospero  is  dethroned 
on   a  gala-day  by   the   people  ;    Caliban — say 


Death   a?2ci  Epitaph       247 

Gambetta — seizes  the  vacant  chair  ;  and  lo, 
the  ruffian,  to  his  own  surprise,  undergoes 
transformation.  By  instinct  he  turns  Con- 
servative. He  guarantees  private  property, 
becomes  a  patron  of  the  fine  arts,  enters  into 
alliance  with  Rome,  which  is  ready  to  crown 
and  consecrate  him.  But  Prospero,  safe  in 
his  Certosa  of  Pavia,  shall  not  be  made  a 
holocaust.  "  Pardon's  the  word  for  all."  No, 
not  for  Ariel,  who  cannot  breathe  in  this 
dense  medium,  and  who  dies  on  a  lingering 
chord  of  his  own  music. 

There  is  something  bitter  and  not  feigned 
in  Kenan's  contemptuous  homage  to  a  Govern- 
ment which  he  and  his  aristocracy  of  talent 
could  not  overthrow.  He  toolc  leave  to  mock 
it  as  a  thing  most  brutish,  praising  with  a 
cynic  gesture  its  toleration  for  such  men  as 
himself,  the  Prospero  whom  a  French  Academy, 
founded  by  a  Roman  cardinal,  sheltered  from 
the  mob.  Science  had  permission  to  exist  in 
the  Republic,  and,  if  it  knew  how,  was  en- 
couraged to  compound  an  elixir  of  life. 

Not  so  did  the  Church  reason  in  her  palmy 
days,  according  to  the  philosophic  dramatist. 


248  Renan 

The  Water  of  Touth  transports  us  to  Avignon, 
with  its  famous  bridge,  palace,  and  French 
Pope,  the  luxurious  Clement  VI.  Prospero 
has  been  arrested  in  the  disguise  of  Arnold,  a 
heretic  and  innovator,  whose  distilling  of  magic 
liquors  cannot  but  trouble  good  Christians. 
In  spite  of  the  enlightened  Clement,  to  say- 
nothing  of  Brunissende — and  the  less  said  of 
her  the  better — death  is  the  penalty  of  his 
too  copious  knowledge.  Prospero,  wiser  than 
Socrates,  puts  by  the  hemlock  to  quaff  the 
elixir  which  brings  him  deliverance.  He  has 
invented  a  method  of  painless  suicide,  or,  as 
the  Greeks  have  it,  euthanasia.  The  dying 
philosopher  is  consoled  by  love  ;  Ariel  revives, 
and,  in  his  turn,  consoles  Celestine,  a  young 
person  whom  we  need  not  describe,  for  she 
has  little  in  common  with  Miranda.  And  the 
play  finishes  with  dancing  on  the  bridge  of 
Avignon,  where  it  began. 

These  doubtful  satires,  not  altogether  wel- 
come in  lay  company,  to  which  Renan  appeared 
as  a  sort  of  priest,  recall  what  he  had  written 
concerning  Lamennais.  They  were  "  bold 
blasphemies,"  such  as  have  been  familiar  at  all 


Death  and  Epitaph       249 


times  to  apostates,  and  are  characteristic  of 
them.  It  was  even  said  that  he  went  beyond 
Voltaire,  by  transposing  the  language  of  devo- 
tion to  antichristian  uses.  At  all  events,  it  is 
only  in  French  literature  that  we  come  upon 
so  sustained  and  deliberate  a  parody  of  holy 
things,  the  "  flowers  of  evil  "  which  a  man 
grown  aged  by  midnight  lamps  and  studies 
should  have  refrained  from  planting.  Was  not 
this  also  vanity  ? 

Fantasies,  without  the  salt  of  life  in  them, 
miracle-plays  dedicated  to  science,  are  among 
the  Senilia  which  in  a  famous  career  we  would 
willingly  forget.  The  Priest  of  Nemi  commands 
a  deeper  interest.  It  moves  about  Renan,  its 
undoubted  hero,  and  France  in  a  period  of 
eclipse,  religious  or  political.  Every  one  has 
heard  the  story  as  told  in  the  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome.  A  most  learned  and  ingenious  com- 
mentator, Mr.  Frazer,  has  made  of  it,  in  his 
Golden  Bought  the  text  on  which  to  embroider 
infinite  folklore  from  all  ages  and  nations. 
Turner's  sunlit  picture  flings  over  it  a  radiance 
that  almost  transfigures  the  horrible  romance. 
Diana's   priest,    the    "  King   of   the   Woods," 


250  Renan 

armed  with  his  drawn  sword,  lurks  to  this  day 
among  the  enchanted  trees  above  the  Lake  of 
Nemi — 

Those  trees  in  whose  dim  shadow 
The  ghastly  priest  doth  reign, 

The  priest  who  slew  the  slayer 
And  shall  himself  be  slain. 

Renan,  who  had  often  passed  by  it,  de- 
scribed the  Lake  and  its  fringe  of  sylvan 
foliage,  as  the  "  most  amazing  bit  of  fairy- 
land" he  had  ever  seen.  Priest,  therefore,  has 
slain  priest  time  out  of  mind,  succeeding  by 
this  awful  rite  to  the  Arician  sanctuary.  Thus 
far  Ovid,  Statins,  the  Latin  historians.  Now 
comes  our  modern  with  his  lesson  for  the  age. 
Antistius  ought  to  have  murdered  Tetricus  ; 
but  he  spared  that  ruffian,  who  died  of  grief, 
and  was  himself  elected  priest  by  a  popular 
vote.  He  puts  down  human  sacrifice,  con- 
verts the  oracle  to  a  pulpit,  teaches  the  Sibyl 
Carmenta  his  doctrine  of  light  and  purity, 
declines  to  make  a  gain  by  imposture,  and 
foretells  the  greatness  of  Rome.  It  follows 
that  he  is  hated  of  his  mother-city,  Alba 
Longa.     The    people    call    him    atheist  ;     the 


Death   a7id  Epitaph       251 


soldiers  charge  upon  him  their  own  defeats. 
Ganeo,  profligate  and  coward,  expresses  public 
opinion  in  one  way,  Metius,  the  aristocrat,  in 
another  ;  but  they  agree  that  Antistius  ought 
to  be  removed.  In  the  end  Casca  slays  him  ; 
the  old  ritual  of  blood  is  set  up  once  more,  and 
order  reigns  in  Alba  Longa.  Yet  Carmcnta 
prophesies  in  a  frenzied  strain  that  Rome  will 
triumph.  For  Alba  Longa  read  France,  for 
Rome  Germany,  and  draw  the  conclusion. 

But  Antistius,  the  Liberal,  what  good  has 
he  done  his  country  by  preaching  the  truth, 
nay,  by  suffering  martyrdom  in  behalf  of  it  ? 
Has  he  not  been  righteous  overmuch  ?  "  Yes," 
he  cries,  "  a  truth  benefits  only  the  soul  that 
discovers  it ;  one  man's  meat  is  another  man's 
poison.  Ah,  be  thou  accursed,  light  which  I 
have  loved  !  Thou  hast  betrayed  me.  I  was 
eager  to  reform  the  race  of  men  ;  I  have 
led  them  astray.  O  joy  of  life,  thou  spring  of 
greatness  and  affection,  to  these  wretches  thou 
art  become  the  source  of  all  that  is  degrading  !  " 

Here  it  will  be  worth  while  to  quote  M. 
Bourget,  who  for  years  was  Renan's  close 
follower.     Akin  to  him  in  sensitive  refinement, 


252  Renan 

in  a  certain  elegance  bordering  on  effeminacy, 
and  in  the  culture  of  exotic  literature,  he 
deserved  to  wear  Elijah's  mantle.  But  M. 
Bourget  it  is  who  asks  whether  in  the  moral 
agony  of  this  revolutionary  priest  we  ought 
not  to  recognize  the  master's  act  of  contrition. 

"  In  painting  the  Christ  as  he  saw  Him," 
observes  the  gentle  critic,  "  he  has  helped  to 
draw  away  from  the  Church  numbers  who 
understood  in  his  books  simply  their  negations. 
In  giving  himself  up  to  the  pleasing  reveries  of 
a  philosophic  fancy,  he  has  spread  abroad  the 
latest  of  social  diseases ;  I  mean,  that  dilettant- 
ism which  combines  with  rarest  gifts  of  intellect 
a  paralysis  of  the  will.  Assuredly,  he  did  not 
intend  his  works  to  have  these  consequences. 
But  he  cannot  deny  them.  How,  then,  should 
he  not  ask  himself  whether  the  things  he  has 
handled  did  not  deserve  to  be  respected,  even 
at  the  cost  of  his  own  silence  ?  " 

Renan  has  anticipated  the  question,  as  is 
clear  from  the  drama  ;  but  while  he  resolves  it 
in  one  way  when  the  priest  of  Nemi  speaks 
he  gives  another  and  an  opposite  solution 
when  he  speaks  himself.      For  he  is  always  the 


Death   aiid  Epitaph       253 

oracle  which  we  may  interpret  as  we  please. 
"  No,"  he  exclaims  in  the  preface,  "  I  have 
not  been  among  the  timid  who  believe  that 
truth  needs  a  penumbra."  He  almost  contra- 
dicts a  wise  old  French  proverb  when  he  goes 
on  to  tell  us,"  Toute  verite  est  bonne  a  savoir." 
And,  as  we  saw  not  many  lines  previously,  he 
has  put  the  exact  reverse  of  this  affirmation 
into  the  mouth  of  Antistius.  Moreover,  rejoins 
M.  Bourget,  is  every  passing  opinion,  be  it 
called  science  or  history,  a  truth  ?  Is  it  not,  in 
Kenan's  own  words,  one  thing  to  opine,  another 
to  be  certain  ?  If  a  man  struggling  towards 
the  light  is  edifying  to  all  who  mark  his  heroic 
efforts,  what  could  be  more  dangerous  than 
the  self-indulgent  mood  which  comes  to  no 
conclusion  ?  Against  that  form  of  Nihilism, 
even  because  it  caresses  and  beguiles,  M. 
Bourget  lifts  a  warning  voice.  But  he  would 
fain  perceive  in  Antistius  the  martyr  whose 
blood  is  the  seed  of  victory,  rather  than  a 
disheartened  and  despairing  reformer. 

M.  Seailles  is  not  so  lenient.  By  choice  of 
names  and  force  of  contrast,  he  declares.  The 
Priest  of  Nemi  announces  that  French  civilisa- 


2  54  Renan 

tion  will  be  swept  away  in  a  Teutonic  flood. 
Renan,  he  truly  says,  hated  war  ;  his  counsels, 
however  bravely  meant,  implied  surrender. 
All  had  been  flung  into  the  melting-pot — 
property,  patriotism,  religion,  family  life,  in 
Alba  Longa,  while  Rome  was  building  up  a 
new  society  and  writing  its  immortal  Code. 
Antistius,  by  the  lips  of  Carmenta,  pleads  for 
those  Germans  who  in  the  nineteenth  century 
had  every  kind  of  wisdom,  against  the  elegant 
but  corrupt  French  who  had  none.  Thus  far 
M.  Seailles,  the  most  independent  of  critics. 

A  parallel  may  here  be  suggested  which  often 
recurs  to  the  mind  as  we  turn  over  Renan's  cor- 
respondence. The  singular,  nay,  the  unique 
and  baffling  element  in  all  he  writes,  is  that 
every  thought  calls  out  its  contrary.  Feeling 
on  this  side,  reason  on  that,  hold  a  dialogue 
which  comes  to  no  reconcilement,  for  want 
of  common  terms  between  the  persons  of  the 
drama.  Obedient  to  reason,  cold  and  neutral, 
this  man  had  forsaken  his  Church  and 
stripped  the  Redeemer  of  divine  attri- 
butes ;  but  still  he  worshipped  Jesus,  he  felt 
the   charm   of   Apostolic   Rome.     Once    more 


Death   a7id  Rpitaph       255 


The  Priest  of  Nemi  exhibits  him  as  divided 
between  his  mother-country — "  la  belle 
pecheresse,"  in  the  strong  figure  which  some 
one  has  employed — and  the  German  con- 
queror, whose  weapon,  like  that  of  Achilles, 
heals  where  it  wounds.  Again  he  loves,  but 
loses  heart,  gives  up  what  is  dear  to  him, 
yet  lingers  by  the  deathbed  which  he  cannot 
console. 

He  had  done  his  utmost.  France  needed  a 
reformation  in  its  governing  ideas.  "  Woe  to 
that  generation,"  he  had  told  his  countrymen 
before  the  evil  days  fell  upon  them,  "  which 
takes  life  to  be  idle  rest  and  the  arts  to  be 
mere  enjoyment  !  "  But  his  own  courage  was 
failing.  "  Let  us  neither  affirm  nor  deny,"  he 
said  with  a  helpless  gesture,  as  of  one  sinking 
into  an  opium-dream.  Yet  he  added,  "  An 
immense  moral  debasement,  nay,  perhaps  an 
intellectual  one,  will  set  in  as  soon  as  religion 
disappears."  By  way  of  enforcing  this  salutary 
lesson,  he  put  his  hand  to  a  work  which  Madame 
Darmesteter,  his  enthusiastic  friend,  calls  "  an 
aberration  of  the  moral  instinct,"  and  which 
lowered  him  in  the  eyes  of  Matthew  Arnold, 


256  Renan 

whose  theological  writings  echo  more  than  one 
of  Renan's  principles,  but  do  not  sacrifice  to 
"  the  great  goddess  Lubricity." 

The  Abbess  of  Joiiarre  is  offered  to  readers 
who  welcome  Platonic  myths  in  modern 
French.  It  is  not  an  edifying  story.  The 
nun  who  breaks  her  vow  in  presence  of  death, 
when  condemned  to  the  guillotine  by  revo- 
lutionary France,  is  not  only  grotesque,  but 
ignoble  ;  her  accomplice,  D'Arcy,  is  an  odious 
and  cold-blooded  reasoner,  of  the  worst 
eighteenth  century  type ;  and  if,  as  M. 
Seailles  insists,  they  are  both  pupils  of  Renan, 
we  pity  the  schoolmaster.  But  the  moral  of 
this  performance  is  even  more  astonishing  than 
its  execution.  "  I  often  imagine,"  says  the 
author  placidly,  "  that  if  mankind  knew  for 
certain  the  world  would  come  to  an  end  in  two 
or  three  days,  love  " — he  calls  it  love — "  would 
break  out  on  all  sides  with  a  sort  of  frenzy  ; 
for  that  which  restrains  love  is  the  limit  put 
upon  it  by  the  need  of  keeping  society  intact." 
These  universal  Saturnalia  would  be  "  high 
adoration  "  and  "  perfect  prayer,"  comparable 
to  the  ecstasies  of  primitive  Christians. 


Death   a?ici  Epitaph       2  ^'J 

Perhaps  Mr.  Arnold's  comment  on  the  spirit 
which  dictated  so  peculiarly  Gallic  a  rendering 
of  the  Last  Day  will  suffice  here.  It  was  written 
before  the  Abbess  had  come  on  the  boards, 
which  makes  it,  if  possible,  more  apposite. 
"  Even  though  a  gifted  man  like  M.  Renan," 
he  observed  in  his  American  Lectures  of  1883, 
"  may  be  so  carried  away  by  the  tide  of  opinion 
in  France  where  he  lives,  as  to  say  that  Nature 
cares  nothing  about  chastity,  and  to  see  with 
amused  indulgence  the  worship  of  the  great 
goddess  Lubricity,  let  us  stand  fast  and  say 
that  her  worship  is  against  nature — human 
nature — and  that  it  is  ruin."  He  drives  the 
lesson  home  in  words  equally  to  our  purpose  : 
"  The  Eternal  has  attached  to  certain  moral 
causes  the  safety  or  ruin  of  States,  and  the 
present  popular  literature  of  France  is  a  sign 
that  she  has  a  most  dangerous  moral  disease." 

This,  too,  is  the  witness  of  M.  Taine,  whose 
candid  studies  led  him  to  conclude  that  Chris- 
tian virtues  arc  the  wings  which  bear  up 
civilized  society.  *'  Ever  and  always,"  he 
affirms  in  a  well-known  passage,  "  for  eighteen 
hundred  years,  so  soon  as  those  wings  droop 

17 


258  Renan 

or  are  broken,  public  and  private  morals  de- 
cline. In  Italy  during  the  Renaissance,  in 
England  under  the  Restoration,  in  France 
under  the  Convention  and  the  Directory,  we 
see  men  turn  Pagans  as  in  the  first  century  of 
our  era.  By  the  same  token  they  became  what 
they  were  in  the  days  of  Augustus  and  Tiberius, 
voluptuous  and  hard.  They  misused  others 
and  themselves.  Selfishness,  brutal  or  cunning, 
had  got  the  upper  hand.  Cruelty  and  sen- 
suality flaunted  their  colours,  and  society  was 
converted  into  a  den  of  thieves  or  a  house  of 
shame." 

Certainly,  it  may  be  rejoined,  but  the 
Abbess  denies  none  of  these  things.  To  which 
we  answer  that,  if  the  Abbess  means  what 
Renan  had  always  in  view — not  an  imagined 
Last  Day,  but  "  France  where  he  lived  " — his 
play  condones  decadent  morals  and  sets  the 
future  on  a  hazard.  "  The  century  in  which 
I  have  passed  my  time,"  he  said  when  summing 
up  his  recollections,  "  will  probably  not  turn 
out  to  be  the  greatest,  but  surely  it  will  be 
reckoned  the  most  amusing  of  ages."  And 
elsewhere  he  judges  a  period  of  national  decline 


Death   and  Rpitaph       259 

to    be    the    pleasantest   for  men   like  himself. 

Not, then,  shame  or  repentance,  but  a  plenary 
indulgence,  of  which  no  good  works  were  a 
condition — to  accept  one's  disease  and  enjoy 
it — is  the  supreme  duty,  as  we  learn  it  from 
the  Abbess  of  Jotiarre.  The  pride  of  science, 
which  had  at  one  time  inspired  him  with  a 
vision  of  the  last  wise  man,  still  reasoning 
amid  the  shock  of  worlds,  has  given  place  to  a 
sensual  curiosity.  There  is  no  longer  an  aim  in 
life  or  knowledge.  Carried  away  by  the  flood 
of  phenomena,  Renan  loses  in  his  work  its  ideal 
unity,  in  his  busy  days  any  definite  scope  ; 
he  wanders  more  and  more  astray  from  the 
goal  which  he  had  set  himself  at  starting. 
"  Dulcia  vitia  !  "  he  would  tell  us  in  the  words 
he  addressed  to  Jules  Sandeau.  But  is  it  not 
rather  the  breaking  up  of  a  great  intellectual 
empire  into  rebel  provinces,  where  the  desert 
invades  and  ancient  cities  fall  to  ruin  ?  We 
cannot  but  see  in  all  this  the  dissolution  of  a 
soul  which  was  originally  destined  to  enlighten 
the  world. 

His  last  undertaking,  the  History  of  Israel, 
was  completed  before  he  died,  but  only  in  part 


2  6o  Renan 

revised.  These  five  volumes  need  not  detain 
us  long.  Style  and  thought  could  not  be 
wanting  to  them  ;  passages  of  rare  subtlety 
call  up  the  enchanter  we  have  known  ;  but  he 
comes  after  men  like  Ewald,  who  were  deeply 
religious  and  inherited  something  of  the  pro- 
phetic spirit  ;  or  like  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen, 
original  explorers,  in  whose  light  his  literary 
displays  grow  dim.  For  half  a  century  he  had 
been  occupied  with  Hebrew  lore  ;  his  atten- 
tion had  been  drawn  to  the  possible  results  in 
that  province  of  epigraphy  ;  but  he  discovered 
little  and  suggested  nothing  new. 

Moreover,  while  he  followed  the  latest  of 
the  chorizontes,  who  broke  up  the  sacred  text 
until  it  showed  as  many  colours  as  the  rainbow 
wherever  one  opened  it,  a  conservative  reaction 
was  approaching.  The  monuments  were  build- 
ing up  what  the  philologists  had  pulled  down. 
Babylon  was  already  furnishing  a  commentary 
upon  Genesis  which  earlier  sceptics  had  never 
dreamt  of,  and  which  their  descendants  could 
not  resist.  The  amazing  revelations  of  Tel  el- 
Amarna  were  soon  to  transform  our  whole  view 
of  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  relations  at  a  highly 


Death   a?id  Epitaph       261 

significant  period  for  believers  in  Scripture. 
Archaeology,  in  the  words  of  Professor  Sayce, 
was  tending  to  "  substantiate  the  historical 
trustworthiness  of  the  older  records  of  the 
Hebrew  people  and  the  antiquity  of  the  docu- 
ments which  contain  them."  A  -priori  con- 
jectures, ingenious  emendations  of  the  text, 
"  all  carved  out  of  the  carver's  brain,"  must 
give  way  to  actual  and  contemporary  evidence. 
It  had  become  more  entertaining  to  read 
Lenormant,  Brugsch,  Pinches,  Schrader,  and 
their  fellow-workers,  than  to  listen  while  a 
fatigued  man  of  letters  polished  up  his  favourite 
sarcasms,  handled  David  somewhat  in  the 
manner  of  Voltaire,  and  betrayed  his  want  of 
acquaintance  with  primitive  folk-lore. 

In  spite  of  his  Oriental  learning,  his  travels  in 
the  East,  and  his  boundless  curiosity,  we  feel 
something  in  Renan  which  will  not  let  him 
enter,  as  deeply  as  his  subject  requires,  into  that 
ancient  world.  He  is  too  Greek  or  too  French. 
Imperfect  sympathy  creates  a  barrier  between 
this  dainty,  over-refined  Western  and  the  rude 
greatness  of  the  Biblical  heroes.  All  that  he 
could  tell  us  about  his  own  thoughts,  hinted 


262  Renan 

in  eloquent  paragraphs,  will  not  serve  instead 
of  the  power  which  he  was  unable  to  wield. 
When  he  comes  down  to  the  age  before  Chris- 
tianity, and  Alexandria  becomes  the  meeting- 
place  of  Hebrew  and  Hellene,  as  in  Philo,  his 
magic  staff  recovers  its  virtue.  But  the  Israel 
of  the  Old  Testament,  for  which  he  always 
cherished  an  aversion,  did  not  inspire  him. 
The  Prophets  themselves  were  "  violent  tri- 
bunes of  justice  "  ;  and  their  visions  of  the 
supernatural  could  be  to  him  only  the  baseless 
fabric  of  a  dream. 

Thus  he  was  drawing  near  the  end,  never 
idle,  calm  and  cheery,  much  loved,  flattered, 
and  even  spoilt  by  an  indulgent  France. 
After  his  Reminiscences  came  out,  he  went 
down  in  August,  1884,  to  Treguier,  on  which 
he  had  not  set  eyes  during  some  forty  years. 
The  Bretons  are  fervent  Catholics  ;  but  they 
were  willing  to  see  in  this  unfrocked  seminarist 
a  man  of  their  race  and  language  whom  the 
great  world  adored.  He  made  up  his  mind  to 
live  among  them  ;  and  at  Rosmapamon  dis- 
covered the  house,  "  parva  sed  apta  mihi,"  as 
he  told  Berthelot,  smiling,  which  became  his 


Death   and  Epitaph       263 

summer  resort  onwards  from  1885.  He  planned 
a  new  journey  to  the  East.  But  he  never  went 
thither  again.  His  grandchildren  were  a  joy 
and  entertainment  to  the  scholar,  who  had 
always  been  something  of  a  child  himself.  He 
presided  at  Breton  dinners,  lifted  his  glass  in 
homage  to  Beranger,  rebuked  the  growing 
sadness  of  youth,  and  taught  the  philosophy  of 
Hedonism. 

We  read  in  St.  Paul  that  there  are  many 
graces,  but  one  spirit  who  gives  them. 
Renan  parodies  the  sacred  words.  "  The  means 
of  salvation,"  he  writes  in  his  Loose  Leaves 
(the  English  title  fits  them  on  this  occasion), 
"  are  not  the  same  for  all.  To  one  virtue  is  the 
means ;  to  another,  pursuit  of  truth ;  to 
another,  art  ;  to  yet  others,  curiosity,  ambi- 
tion, travel,  luxury,  the  fair  sex,  riches  ;  on 
the  lowest  grade  morphine  and  alcohol.  The 
most  dangerous  mistake,  as  regards  the  morals 
of  human  society,  is  to  put  down  pleasure  on 
system." 

His  own  pleasure,  if  not  sanctified  by  the 
high  mark  at  which  he  had  ceased  to  aim,  was 
in  its  kind  not  ignoble.     As  administrator  in 


264  Renan 

the  College  de  France  he  did  his  dut)-  ;  and 
he  continued  his  lectures  in  spite  of  illness, 
until  he  had  almost  to  be  carried  into  his  chair. 
The  rooms  assigned  him  were  narrow  and  un- 
comfortable. "  I  have  had  a  good  deal  to  put 
up  with,"  he  wrote  in  a  private  memorandum 
found  among  his  papers,  "  sometimes  even 
downright  poverty,  but  never,  never  was  I  so 
wretchedly  lodged  as  in  the  College  de  France." 
He  made  no  public  complaint.  Berthelot  and 
Renan  looked  with  disquietude  on  incidents 
like  the  adventure  of  Boulanger  ;  the  debase- 
ment of  France  was  setting  in  more  strongly 
than  ever.  "  Our  incurable  etourderie,  our  want 
of  organization,  our  illusions,  frighten  me," 
said  Renan  to  his  friend  in  1888  ;  "  but  we 
are  old.  The  just  measure  of  life  has  been 
vouchsafed  us  ;  we  have  had  our  live  acts  ;  we 
should  be  unfair  did  we  protest  too  mucli.  It 
is  not  an  ill  condition,  nor  does  it  lack  a 
certain  charm,  to  behave  as  a  dying  man, 
moriturus.^^ 

The  last  long  expedition  which  lie  undertook 
was  to  the  Riviera  towards  the  end  of  1891. 
He   was   always   correcting   the   proofs   of   his 


Death   and  Epitaph       265 


Israel,  fearing  if  another  did  it  by  and  by  that 
he  should  suffer  more  on  that  account  in  pur- 
gatory. His  rheumatic  pains  never  left  him. 
In  July  1892  he  was  at  Rosmapamon,  whence 
his  last  letter  to  the  friend  of  his  youth  is  dated. 
"  How  well  we  did,"  he  writes,  "  to  choose  our 
philosophy  of  life  when  we  were  young  and 
strong  !  How  late  it  would  be  to  think  of 
these  things  when  the  end  threatens  and  we 
must  expect  a  removal !  All  that  is  not  new 
to  mc.  To  end  is  nothing  ;  I  have  almost 
fulfilled  my  life's  plan  ;  I  could  make  good  use 
of  some  years  yet ;  but  I  am  ready  to  go.  It 
is  hard,  I  grant,  that  one  should  be  the  cause 
of  grief  to  others,  and  should  trouble  the  lives 
of  those  who  are  dear  to  one.  In  that  matter, 
a  reasonable  euthanasia^  guided  by  sound  philo- 
sophy, could  do  much." 

In  his  Reminiscences  he  had  provided  against 
what  he  considered  the  accidents  whereby 
Augustin  Thierry  and  Littre  had  given  the 
lie  to  their  former  opinions.  "  I  protest  in 
advance,"  he  declared,  "  against  the  foolish 
things  {les  faiblesses)  which  softening  of  the 
brain  might  lead  me  to  say  or  to  subscribe.     It 


2  66  Renan 

is  Renan  whole  in  mind  and  heart,  as  I  am  this 
day,  not  Renan  half  the  prey  of  death,  as  I 
shall  be  if  I  am  slowly  to  break  up,  for  whom 
I  desire  credit  and  attention.  I  abjure  the 
blasphemies  which  one  last  hour  of  weakness 
might  elicit  from  me  against  the  Eternal." 

He  was  not  to  be  tempted.  A  sudden  failure 
of  the  heart  warned  him  that  his  days  were 
numbered.  "  Take  me  back  to  the  College," 
he  insisted ;  and  his  devoted  wife  obeyed. 
There,  among  friends  and  kinsfolk,  he  died 
without  suffering  on  October  2,  1892.  "  That 
great  intellect,"  says  the  Livre  d'Or,  compiled 
by  his  admirers,  "  which  had  reflected  so  many 
aspects  of  human  thought,  expired  in  peace 
and  in  absolute  negation." 

The  French  Republic,  though  he  had  never 
loved  it,  gave  him  a  State  funeral.  Before  his 
coffin,  M.  Bourgeois,  Minister  of  Education, 
and  many  others,  held  orations  in  the  College 
vestibule.  Senators,  deputies,  generals,  judges, 
delegates  from  learned  societies,  officials  of 
every  rank,  students,  professors,  diplomatists, 
all  came  flocking  to  do  him  honour.  The 
Grand  Orient  of  France  sent  a  wreath  for  his 


Death   and  Epitaph       267 

coffin,  which  was  hidden  by  the  floral  crowns 
cast  upon  it.  During  its  passage  to  the  grave 
a  detachment  of  infantry  accompanied  its 
march,  thousands  of  spectators  lined  the  streets. 
It  had  been  proposed  that  Renan  should  find 
a  resting-place  under  the  dome  of  the  Pan- 
theon, formerly  Ste.  Genevieve,  which  was 
secularized  to  make  room  for  the  relics  of 
Victor  Hugo  not  many  years  previously.  But 
difficulties  arose,  and  the  body  was  committed, 
by  Madame  Kenan's  wish,  to  the  vault  of  her 
own  family,  the  Scheffers,  at  Montmartre. 
His  wife  survived  him  less  than  two  years, 
dying  on  May  22,  1894;  his  son  Ary,  who  was 
winning  distinction  as  a  poet  and  a  draughts- 
man, and  who  seems  to  have  been  of  a  very 
amiable  character,  died  on  August  4,  1900. 
Madame  Psichari,  Renan's  daughter,  lives  with 
her  children  in  the  country  house  of  Rosma- 
pamon. 

By  anticipation  the  man  himself  sketched  his 
own  epitaph,  not  on  the  walls  of  a  cemetery, 
but,  as  was  fitting,  during  a  banquet  at  Tre- 
guier,  when  he  first  went  back  thither  in  1884. 
It  is  Renan's  Afologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  which  in 


2  68  Re?ta?i 

justice  ought  not  to  be  passed  over.  "  I 
should  like,"  he  said,  "  to  have  written  on  my 
tomb — ah,  if  it  could  be  in  the  midst  of  that 
cloister,  but  the  cloister  is  the  Church,  and 
the  Church,  mistakenly  enough,  will  have 
nothing  to  do  with  me — but  I  wish  to  have  on 
my  tomb  these  words,  Veritatem  dilexi.  Yes, 
I  have  loved  the  truth,  sought  it,  followed 
whither  it  called  me,  without  regard  to  the 
sacrifice  entailed.  I  broke  the  links  that  were 
dearest  to  mc  that  I  might  obey  it.  And  I 
am  sure  that  I  did  right.  Let  me  express  my 
meaning.  No  one  can  be  certain  that  he 
understands  the  riddle  of  the  universe  ;  the 
infinite  that  clasps  us  round  escapes  from  all 
the  lines  and  formulas  we  set  upon  it.  But  one 
thing  there  is  that  we  may  affirm  :  sincerity  of 
heart,  devotion  to  truth,  the  consciousness  of 
what  we  have  given  up  for  its  sake.  That  wit- 
ness I  will  hold,  high  and  firm,  above  my  head 
on  the  Day  of  Judgment." 

Who  could  find  it  in  his  heart  to  gainsay 
these  passionate  words,  or  to  question  whether 
Renan  believed  what  he  uttered  so  resolutely  ? 
But  the  Latin  proverb  warns  us,  "  Exitus  acta 


Death   and  Rpitaph       269 

probat,"  and  a  tree  is  known  by  its  fruits. 
M.  Seailles,  contemplating  the  teacher's  whole 
course,  affirms  that  he  "  mistook  indecision 
for  sincerity "  ;  that  when  he  quitted  St. 
Sulpice  it  was  not  only  the  enthusiasm  of  a 
truth-seeker  which  moved  him,  but  terror  lest 
he  should  be  committed  beyond  recall  by  ad- 
vancing to  the  priesthood  ;  and  that  his  love 
of  "  the  Truth  "  ended  in  a  defeat  which  had 
nothing  to  boast  of  but  its  resignation. 

Another  has  observed,  in  view  of  the  philo- 
sopher's last  achievements,  intended  to  win 
applause  from  an  unreformed  world,  "  saltavit 
et  placuit,"  he  danced  to  a  music  which  his 
better  sense  condemned  as  lascivious  and 
obscene.  In  a  gentler  mood  Alphonse  Daudet 
likened  him  to  a  cathedral  which  has  been 
desecrated  to  profane  uses,  but  where  amid 
the  hay.  straw,  and  stubble,  while  the  choir  is 
turned  to  a  messroom,  and  the  stalls  are  a 
stabling  for  horses,  it  is  impossible  to  forget 
that  the  building  was  once  a  church.  And 
yet  another  saying,  uttered  in  fierce  wrath  by 
Ludovicus  Vives  against  the  Arabian  sceptic, 
Averroes,    may    be    applied    to    this   versatile 


270  Renan 

teacher,  "  He  must  needs  grow  impious  and 
atheistical  who  is  vehemently  given  to  the 
study  of  thy  writings."  Such,  at  all  events, 
was  the  opinion  held  by  those  French  public 
men  who  saw  in  his  State  funeral  a  protest 
against  all  religion  and  against  the  Christian 
in  particular. 

How  now,  we  may  further  ask,  will  the 
epitaph  look  which  we  have  cited  above,  when 
set  in  a  parallel  column  with  another  passage 
equally  authentic  ?  "  We  stake  our  nobility," 
says  Renan,  with  pride,  "  on  an  obstinate 
affirmation  of  duty.  But,"  he  continues, 
"  there  are  almost  as  many  chances  that  the 
opposite  may  be  true.  It  may  be  that  these 
voices  within  us  are  the  consequence  of  sin- 
cere delusions,  kept  up  by  habit,  and  that  the 
world  is  an  amusing  transfiguration-scene 
which  no  god  has  in  his  care.  We  must  then 
so  arrange  as  on  either  supposition  not  to  be 
entirely  in  the  wrong.  We  ought  to  mind 
those  higher  voices,  but  in  such  a  way  that  if 
the  second  hypothesis  turns  out  to  be  a  fact, 
we  shall  not  have  been  altogether  duped.  " 
Here  is  the  clean  contrary  of  what  was  said 


THE   STATUE   OF    ERNEST    KENAN    AT    I  RtC.UIEK. 


Death   and  Rpitaph       2^  i 


at  Treguier.  But  we  may  write  on  the  same 
page  even  a  third  quotation,  no  less  genu- 
ine "  ReUgion,  which  sums  up  man's  ethical 
needs, — virtue,  modesty,  disinterestedness,  and 
self-sacrifice, — is  the  voice  of  the  universe." 

Astonishing  vitality,  boundless  incoherence, 
these  were  Renan's  qualities  and  defects. 
Nature  had  refused  him  the  graces  ;  but 
his  "  leonine  "  head,  his  features  marked  with 
a  penetrating  intelligence,  his  eyes  lighting 
up  under  slow  eyelids,  could  never  have 
suited  with  a  common  man.  His  voice  had 
many  tones  in  it,  strong,  flexible,  caressing, 
always,  however,  self-controlled.  His  robust 
and  healthy  make,  his  temperance,  and  his  very 
studies,  which  for  years  led  him  into  libraries 
rather  than  where  men  debated  for  their  lives, 
or  artists  hung  feverishly  over  their  canvas, 
brought  him  past  the  age  of  temptation.  All 
this  gave  him  power  and  inclination  to  attempt 
the  chief  enterprise  by  which  he  is  known  ;  it 
saved  him  when  old  and  somewhat  frivolously- 
minded  from  pitfalls  in  which  other  literary 
heroes  had  lost  their  character.  At  all  the 
turning-points  in  life  he  showed  energy  as  well 


272  Renan 

as  decision.  Except  from  his  sister  Henriette 
he  seems  never  to  have  asked  advice.  Early 
and  late  he  took  his  own  way.  He  acknow- 
ledged in  Augustin  Thierry  a  "  spiritual  mas- 
ter "  ;  but  he  was  not  familiar  with  Thierry 
when  he  changed  his  course  in  1845.  In- 
tellectual ancestors  he  had  none  outside  books  ; 
and  if  disciples  came,  he  did  not  seek  them. 

His  place  in  French  literature  is  a  lonely  one, 
more  than  Balzac's  or  even  Flaubert's.  And 
his  manner  of  speech  is  inimitable.  M.  Bour- 
get  tells  a  pleasant  story  of  the  critic  who  could 
analyse  every  great  style  and  lay  bare  its  secret  ; 
when  the  talk  fell  on  Renan,  he  shook  his  head. 
"  Ah,  that  man's  phrase,"  he  exclaimed  ;  "  one 
sees  not  how  it  is  made."  In  fact,  it  was  not 
made.  Touches,  no  doubt,  of  infinite  delicacy 
brought  out  the  required  expression.  The 
master  was  never  weary  of  correcting  himself. 
His  manuscripts  abound  in  erasures  ;  his 
printed  revisions  went  on  for  months.  But 
the  character  of  his  phrase  may  be  ascribed  to 
a  vitality  which  fostered  the  inward  sense,  to 
exercise  in  the  logic  of  the  Schools,  to  much 
reading  in  classical  authors,  and   to  the  self- 


Death   a7id  Epitaph       273 

denial  which  would  not  allow  his  pen  easily  to 
run  after  Chateaubriand  or  Hugo,  landscape- 
painters  whom  he  could  not  rival  and  would 
not  stoop  to  imitate.  His  richness,  or  depth 
of  allusion,  an  uncommon  quality  among 
French  writers,  was  no  trick.  It  was  the  spon- 
taneous pouring  out  of  knowledge  ;  the  dis- 
covery of  new  horizons  consequent  on  his 
travels  through  the  learned  world,  which  men 
of  letters  in  Paris  did  not  explore.  To  unite 
culture  with  science,  erudition  with  life  and 
poetry,  views  the  most  diverse  with  a  tem- 
perament which  had  always  been  "  gay  yet 
resigned,"  was  to  create  a  genius  entirely  novel, 
and  the  corresponding  expression  could  not  but 
follow  in  due  season. 

Renan  maintained  that  he  had  no  need  to  use 
any  words  except  those  which  he  found  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  Gautier  and  St.  Victor 
replied  that  the  ideas  which  he  uttered  in  them 
flung  over  those  words  a  modern  air  and  seeming. 
His  critics  were  surely  in  the  right.  Neverthe- 
less, one  reason  why  he  charms  and  subdues  so 
many,  is  the  dressing  up  in  perfect  but  unpre- 
tending French  of  thoughts  which  are   bold 

18 


2  74  Renan 

to  the  point  of  revolution.  Anarchic,  subtle, 
perverse,  dissolving  as  a  poison  they  may  prove 
to  be  ;  but  they  are  always  elegantly  attired,  and 
as  insinuating  as  music  which  lulls  to  sleep  on 
a  much  loved  rhythm.  To  this  effect  his 
citations  from  the  Latin  Vulgate,  his  fondness 
for  devotional  terms,  his  pretty  "  peal  of 
church  bells,"  as  he  calls  it  himself,  added  ex- 
traordinary power.  Never  was  a  certain  verse 
of  Shakespeare  about  quoting  Scripture  for  a 
purpose  more  strikingly  illustrated. 

By  such  handling  the  sacred  became  all  the 
more  profane;  Holy  Writ  was  made  its  own  refu- 
tation ;  and  Judas  betrayed  his  Master  with  a 
kiss.  To  smile  was  deadlier  in  its  office  than  to 
sneer.  Sympathy  turned  out  to  be  the  sharpest 
criticism.  But  how  irresistible  its  advances  ! 
For  who  could  be  deaf  to  the  voice  of  this 
charmer  ?  He  did  not  argue  or  contend  ;  he 
suggested,  like  faint  echoes  among  the  hills, 
your  own  thoughts  to  you,  until  they  died 
away  in  a  tingling  silence.  But  something 
was  gone  out  of  them,  and  you  could  not 
believe  any  more.  Whatever  delights  us  in 
Renan    comes    from    the  past  with   which   he 


Death  a7id  Rpitaph       275 

had  broken.  All  the  secret  bitterness,  and 
despair  in  the  end,  he  has  added  from  his 
own  stores.  He  is  a  magician  who  reverses 
the  rod  of  power  when  illusion  is  at  its  height. 
That  disenchantment  he  terms  philosophy ; 
the  reversed  rod  is  modern  science  ;  and 
for  the  divine  Prospero  we  must  put  up  with 
Caliban,  who  will,  perhaps,  not  rend  us  in 
pieces  until  the  drunken  fit  seizes  him  once 
more. 

If  a  better  interpretation  of  Kenan's  wisdom 
can  be  found,  it  shall  be  welcome.  Mean- 
while, history  has  provided  a  contrast.  The 
man  who  shared  with  him  an  influence  over  the 
rising  French  generation  as  great  as  Stuart 
Mill's  had  been  in  England  between  i860  and 
1880,  was  Hippolyte  Tainc.  Pupil  and  pro- 
fessor of  the  Normal  School,  Taine  had  re- 
nounced his  Christian  parentage,  given  to 
Hegel  a  literary  form  and  pressure  which  made 
him  a  prophet  side  by  side  with  Rousseau  in  a 
land  not  his  own,  and  declared  thought  to  be  a 
secretion  of  the  brain,  free  will  a  figment,  our 
most  certain  experience  a  "  fixed  hallucina- 
tion."    If  not  atheist  or  materialist  by  force  of 


276  Renan 

terms,  he  was  both  in  the  popular  judgment. 
Assuredly,  no  writer  in  the  Journal  des  Debats 
carried  more  weight  ;  none  was  a  greater  enemy 
of  the  "  clerical  "  opposition.  Yet,  in  mid- 
course,  Taine,  and  not  another,  undertaking 
from  documents  and  evidence  to  deal  with  the 
French  Revolution  on  its  merits,  saw  him- 
self obliged,  as  a  candid  historian,  to  condemn  it 
more  severely  than  Carlyle  had  ever  done  ;  nay, 
to  repeat  in  sentences  crowded  with  facts  un- 
deniable the  language  of  Edmund  Burke. 

Taine  went  a  step  farther.  In  the  Christian 
creed  and  ceremonies  ;  in  its  catechism  and  its 
ideals ;  this  determined  agnostic,  as  for  thirty 
years  he  had  appeared  in  all  his  writings,  now 
perceived  the  source  of  French  greatness.  The 
religious  idea,  the  stay  and  foundation  of  society 
during  fifteen  hundred  years,  had  been  anni- 
hilated by  Jacobins,  who  vainly  strove  to  put 
in  its  place  their  lay  education,  lay  church,  lay 
ethics.  But  all  they  had  accomplished  was  to 
ruin  the  ancient  building,  after  which  they 
took  refuge  in  Napoleon's  barracks.  For  his 
own  part,  Taine,  though  he  did  not  become  a 
Catholic,  found  in  Christian  teaching  the  only 


Death   a7id  Epitaph       277 

hope,  and  submitted  his  once  recalcitrant 
spirit  to  its  guidance.  He  cast  from  him  the 
Revolution  in  every  shape,  whether  as  unbe- 
lieving science,  militant  atheism,  or  State 
monopoly ;  but  he  did  so  in  the  name  of 
unanswerable  witnesses, — the  dead  who  had 
spoken  by  their  acts  and  monuments  which 
every  one  could  examine  for  himself. 

The  six  volumes  that  describe  the  Origins  of 
Contemporary  France  were  at  once  an  indict- 
ment and  a  censure.  They  were  received  with 
shouts  of  amazement,  then  with  silence  ;  but 
they  never  have  been  refuted.  In  this  "  terrible 
book  "  we  may  study  the  consequences  of  a 
philosophic  system  which  Renan,  despite  his 
ingenuities  and  ironies,  could  not  escape  from. 
He  was  no  Jacobin,  politically  speaking;  but 
Robespierre  and  his  acolytes  carried  into  exe- 
cution the  ideas  that  everywhere  lie  hidden 
beneath  Renan's  graceful  persiflage.  He,  too, 
had  indicted  the  new  order  of  things,  almost 
as  decidedly  as  the  historian  now  did  ;  but 
he  had  yielded  to  its  sway  because,  after  all, 
what  in  him  was  a  timid  and  refined  sentiment, 
starting  back  from    its    own    shadow,    in    the 


278  Renan 

Convention  had  become  a  deadly  logic,  armed 
with  sword  and  axe  for  the  destruction  of  its 
foes. 

A  benevolent  critic,  M.  Lanson,  tells  us  that 
Renan  has  "  for  many  minds  rendered  faith 
impossible,  and  equally  impossible  the  war 
against  faith " ;  he  has  made  an  end  of  the 
Voltairian  spirit,  says  M.  Lanson,  and  delivered 
those  who  cannot  be  Christians  from  being 
anti-clerical.  "  Neither  believers  nor  enemies, 
nay  rather  sympathisers  with  belief,  conscious 
that  faith  is  morally  good  for  those  who  can 
hold  by  it,  such  is  what  Renan  has  made  of  us." 
Taine  will  prove  to  the  observant  reader  how 
empty,  if  how  amiable,  is  that  delusion.  In 
the  world  of  which  we  form  part,  indifference 
to  a  creed  is  hostility  so  victorious,  that  it  does 
not  know  the  grave  in  which  its  conquered 
enemy  lies  buried.  Renan  was  in  religion  what 
the  Gironde  was  in  French  politics,  flowery, 
inconsequent,  the  slave  dragged  behind  a 
triumphal  chariot  which  he  had  helped  to  set  in 
motion.  His  Lije  of  Jesus  may  be  summed  up 
in  the  famous  expression  of  Vergniaud,  presid- 
ing at   the  trial  of  Louis  XVI :  "  I    regret  to 


Death   a7id  Epitaph       279 

declare  that  by  a  majority  of  votes  Louis  Capet 
has  been  judged  worthy  of  death."  It  is  the 
headsman's  eloquence,  while  Christianity  lies 
bound  on  the  scaffold,  waiting  until  the  axe 
shaU  fall. 

In  everything  the  confirmed  dilettante  is  a 
prey  to  his  own  dramatic  fancies  ;  the  real,  the 
lasting  abides  far  from  him.  Of  religion,  philo- 
sophy, love,  heroism,  he  may  counterfeit  the 
semblance  ;  but  he  can  boast  no  more.  He  is 
Ixion  enamoured  of  a  cloud.  He  plays  a  part 
on  the  stage  ;  woe  to  the  charmed  spectator 
who  mistakes  it  for  something  real.  In  Ernest 
Renan  the  reality  was  a  wide  and  curious 
erudition,  hung  round  with  shining  jewels 
from  all  possible  systems  ;  but  the  jewels  were 
paste.  His  creed  may  be  brought  down  to  a 
single  negation,  "  The  supernatural  does  not 
exist."  When  we  inquire  of  the  oracle,  "  What, 
then,  shall  we  do  to  possess  everlasting  life  ?  " 
he  answers,  "  Do  as  seems  right  in  your  own 
eyes."  All  differences  are  swallowed  up  in  the 
gulf  of  a  fundamental  unity.  Nero  and  Paul, 
Judas  and  Jesus,  arc  chords  in  one  great  or- 
chestra.    How,  indeed,  should  it   be  othcrwi:^c 


2  8  o  Renan 

when  we  have  reduced  the  personalities,  which 
make  men  each  to  be  himself  and  incommunic- 
able, to  scientific  expressions  with  a  common 
measure  ? 

The  whole  tangled  web  of  Kenan's  contra- 
dictions unfolds  itself  when  we  follow  this 
clue.  He  brings  us  down  to  the  abstract,  imper- 
sonal element  which  in  Hegel,  or  Averroes,  or 
Spinoza  is  the  One  Everlasting.  And  our 
universe  of  spirits  or  monads  is  borne  along  the 
stream  of  tendency,  always  passive,  though  not 
always  inobservant.  A  wise  man  will  often 
smile  at  the  turn  which  things  are  taking,  but 
he  never  resists.  Why  should  he  ?  The 
intellect  is  one  thing,  the  will  another  ;  and 
except  for  the  will  how  can  there  be  a  differ- 
ence between  good  and  evil  ?  To  the 
philosophic  mind  all  phenomena  which  it 
can  perceive  must  be  agreeable,  since  all  are 
equally  objects  of  its  contemplation. 

Here,  then,  we  reach  our  last  analysis.  Life, 
art,  religion,  divorced  from  will,  distilled  into 
atomic  formulas,  have  had  taken  out  of  them 
spontaneity,  the  free  personal  initiative — that 
which  in  morals  is  virtue^  in  thought  judgment, 


Death   afid  Epitaph       281 

in  enterprise  faith,  in  act  resolution.  The 
attempt  to  view  all  things  as  if  the  mind  which 
views  them  did  not  count,  is  intellectual 
suicide.  One  half  of  our  nature,  and  that  the 
more  important,  is  thereby  suppressed.  The 
real  unity,  to  which  every  man  refers  as  to  a 
centre  all  his  doings,  is  sacrificed  to  a  fictitious 
caput  mortuum  called  science,  where  its  faculties 
lose  their  meaning  and  are  no  longer  recog- 
nizable. In  that  unity,  secret  and  deep  as  life 
itself,  the  primal  truths  spring  up  which,  on 
entering  into  contact  with  experience,  make  us 
sure  of  our  own  existence  as  self-conscious 
beings,  of  the  world  outside  us,  and  of  the  laws 
under  which  we  are  bound  to  live. 

Will  it  be  said  that  there  are  no  such  laws  ? 
But  if  that  be  inconceivable,  and  if  science, 
as  defined  by  Renan,  cannot  discover  them, 
what  is  the  inference  ?  Surely  that  "  science," 
handled  upon  this  method,  is  inadequate  and 
misleading.  Though  it  should  break  down, 
the  problem  of  duty  remains  as  imperious 
as  ever,  and  therefore  cannot  be  insoluble. 
Another  method,  a  calculus  of  the  spirit,  must 
be  applied  ;  or  we  shall  judge  like  the  man  born 


282  Renan 

blind  that  colours  do  not  exist,  like  the  un- 
taught savage  that  letters  have  no  meaning. 
Renan's  enormous  negative  which,  in  denying 
the  supernatural,  swept  away  all  that  we  live 
by — God,  conscience  and  immortality — sets, 
therefore,  the  seal  on  his  incompetence  as  a 
great  teacher.  Why  incompetent  ?  Because 
he  had  taken  as  ultimate  criteria  of  the 
truth  physics  masquerading  in  the  shape  of 
history,  sentiment  for  first  principles,  imagina- 
tion for  judgment,  and  a  dead,  or  half-dead 
stream  of  tendency,  for  the  Love  which  a 
greater  than  he  has  celebrated  : — 

That  moves  the  sun  in  heaven  and  all  the  stars. 

Remarkable  as  was  Taine's  conversion  from 
that  unsound  philosophy,  and  decisive  the 
proofs  which  he  brought  against  it,  considered 
in  the  light  of  an  experiment  lasting  now  more 
than  a  hundred  years,  while  France  was  dying 
in  the  moral  vacuum  it  had  created,  a  yet  more 
complete  overthrow  was  inflicted  upon  it  by  one 
before  whom  Taine  veils  his  crest  as  a  thinker — 
we  mean,  of  course,  Cardinal  Newman.  Sin- 
gularly  impressive    is    the    contrast,    in    every 


Death   a7id  Kpitaplj       283 

stage  conspicuous,  between  the  Oxford  divine 
and  the  Parisian  dilettante.  Agreeing  as  they 
did  in  their  conception  of  literature,  in  devotion 
to  Greek  and  Roman  antiquity,  in  disdain  of 
the  applause  which  is  caught  by  picturesque 
language,  in  their  superb  isolation  from 
the  crowd,  and  in  their  gifts  of  irony  and 
brilliant  humour,  they  set  out  from  contra- 
dictory premisses  to  arrive  at  opposite  conclu- 
sions. 

Newman  is  a  Mystic,  Renan  a  Rationalist. 
To  Newman  his  conscience  makes  known  a 
present  Deity  ;  but  to  Renan  it  is  a  human 
invention  without  echo  in  the  heights  or  the 
depths.  The  one  enlarges  on  the  "  ventures 
of  faith  "  ;  by  the  other  we  are  warned  not  to 
be  the  dupes  of  our  better  feelings.  Prayer 
is  the  philosophy  on  which  Newman  feeds  his 
mind  ;  to  Renan  prayer  has  become  absurd, 
for  what  is  it  more  than  talking  to  one's  self  ? 
Reverence,  adoration,  shame  and  holy  fear 
betoken  that  the  one  is  face  to  face  with  a 
Supreme  Judge,  in  whose  kindness  he  revives, 
under  whose  frown  he  wastes  away.  The  other 
sees  no  intellect  superior  to  his  own  ;  reveres  no 


284  Renan 

divinity  ;  suppresses  the  idea  of  sin  ;  loses  the 
delicacy  of  feeling  which  protects  all  exquisite 
virtue  ;  and  writes  his  page  in  the  scandalous 
chronicle  of  French  letters.  With  Newman 
learning,  style,  eloquence,  are  but  means  to  a 
nobler  end  ;  he  is  always  intent  on  religion, 
even  where  he  comes  down  to  a  schoolmaster's 
exercises.  But  Renan,  who  began  at  the  same 
starting-point,  turns  all  this  another  way.  The 
lowest  knowledge  is  the  only  real  truth  ;  art 
loses  its  former  interest  ;  religion  is  a  pretty 
make-believe,  ethics  a  lottery,  life  itself  an  en- 
tertainment. Thus,  to  the  meditative  Newman 
things  eternal  grow  more  and  more  vivid  ;  as  he 
lealizes  the  Divine  Attributes,  man  takes  on 
him  grander  proportions,  becomes  the  heir  of 
infinite  hopes,  and  is  called  to  heroic  deeds. 
This  golden  key  of  personality  unlocks  doors 
which  remain  obstinately  barred  when  the  Pari- 
sian science  beats  upon  them.  In  such  a  way 
is  absolute  negation  met  by  no  less  resolute 
assertion.  But  the  denials  that  scatter  Kenan's 
philosophy  to  the  four  winds,  leaving  him  the 
wreck  of  his  own  fancies,  cannot  have  much  to 
command  them,  since  all  his  wonderful  endow- 


Death   and  Epitaph       285 

ments  do  not  avail  to  save  him  from  incoherence 
and  despair.  In  one  word,  Newman  has  found 
Jesus  ;    Renan  has  lost  Him. 

Such  was  the  experiment,  such  the  outcome 
of  two  lives,  rich  in  their  powers  and  oppor- 
tunities, that,  filling  the  nineteenth  century 
with  their  fame,  have  left  to  after  ages  a  picture 
of  themselves,  and  bear  on  to  a  future  day  the 
undying  strife  between  light  and  darkness. 
How  much  of  either  will  survive  ?  We  cannot 
tell.  But  not  on  arts  of  literature,  equal  in 
both,  will  the  issue  depend.  If  men  turn 
sceptics  ;  if  society  cultivates  decadence  as  a 
pastime  ;  if  the  bands  of  Orion  are  loosened, 
and  Pagan  ethics  drive  out  Christian  from  the 
bridal-chamber,  the  schools,  the  printing-press, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  market  and  the  exchange, 
to  this  movement  of  dissolution  Renan  will 
have  lent  a  powerful  hand.  For  by  denial  or 
by  surrender  he  has  made  these  things  possible. 

Should,  however,  a  creative  breath  renew 
the  world,  and  man  become  once  more  the 
being  of  transcendent  worth  which  he  thought 
himself  at  all  heroic  eras,  not  much  will  be  left 
of  Renan  except  his   memory  as  an  artist,  and 


2  86  Renan 

specimens,  carefully  chosen  from  forbidden 
volumes,  to  illustrate  that  marvellous  gift. 
The  incalculable  quality  which,  for  want  of  a 
better  name,  we  call  genius,  and  which  is,  at 
last,  personality  carried  to  its  highest  power, 
will  never  be  denied  him.  As  a  master  of  his 
native  tongue,  limpid,  unforced,  enchanting, 
whose  only  fault  was  even  too  great  a  dexterity, 
the  Breton  remains  worthy  of  a  place  beside 
Chateaubriand,  over  against  Lamennais,  in- 
spired by  the  charm  of  that  French  idiom  which 
in  those  eloquent  preachers  sounded  tragic  and 
sombre,  but  from  his  pen  flowed  in  a  smiling 
stream.  In  history,  little  that  he  attempted 
will  be  remembered.  As  a  thinker  he  does  not 
count.  Who  would  name  Renan  amid  the 
senate  of  philosophers,  German  or  Greek  : 
But  he  had  something  of  that  which,  in  his 
forerunner,  Abelard,  cast  over  the  man  of 
letters,  the  Parisian  professor,  the  classic  yet 
romantic  medieval  doctor,  a  gleam  of  imperish- 
able renown.  Abelard  opened  the  way  to  an 
alliance  between  the  Church  and  Aristotle  by 
his  very  aberrations ;  Renan  stated,  though  he 
could  not  resolve,  the  problem  of   Scripture- 


Death   a?2ci  Epitaph       2Sy 


criticism.  From  the  day  when  his  Life  of  Jesus 
appeared  the  Bible  has  become  for  clergy  no 
less  than  laity  a  modern  book,  the  most 
momentous  in  living  literature. 

On  x^ugust  30,  1902,  the  town  council  of 
Treguier  voted,  by  a  majority  of  eleven  to  five, 
that  a  monument  should  be  erected  to  Renan 
in  one  of  its  public  squares.  A  committee  was 
formed,  including,  besides  French  celebrities, 
foreign  names  like  George  Meredith,  Ibsen, 
Maeterlinck,  Galdos,  Brandes,  Gerard  Haupt- 
mann,  and  Mommsen.  The  bronze  seated 
figure,  above  which  rises  Athena  to  signify  the 
ideal  which  he  worshipped,  is  now  in  its  place. 
But,  by  way  of  protest,  the  Catholic  Bretons 
have  set  up  an  image  of  C.ilvary  over  against 
it.  "  To  give  Renan  a  monument,"  said  M. 
Anatole  France,  "  is  to  erect  one  to  science  and 
wisdom."  Renan  himself  has  written,  "  A 
beautiful  work  is  that  which  represents,  under 
finite  and  individual  traits,  the  infinite,  the 
everlasting  beauty  of  human  nature."  He  said 
also,  "  Error  founds  nothing ;  no  error  can 
last  very  long."  Bv  those  sentences  let  him  be 
judged. 


288  R 


enan 


In  the  Suffliants  of  Euripides,  three  lines 
occur  which  a  believer  may  well  apply  to  the 
French  iconoclast — 

AAA    i]  (pp6v>](Ti9  Tou  Oeou  jueitov  crOii'eiv 
Tr]T€i,  TO  yavpov  o  ev  (bpecriv  KeKTrjjxevoi 
SoKOV/j.ei'  elvai  SaifxovMV  <TO<pu>Tepoi. 

A  sentiment  of  which  the  drift  would  perhaps 
be  expressed  in  English  as  follows — 

Our  thought  presumes  to  scan  the  mind  of  God 
And  finds  it  wanting  ;  thus,  with  pride  possessed, 
Wiser  than  angels  we  esteem  ourselves. 

That  epitaph,  inscribed  on  Ernest  Kenan's 
tomb,  would  shadow  forth  a  mind  which, 
looking  out  into  the  universe,  saw  nothing 
to  worship  but  its  own  powers,  and  which 
ended  in  absolute  negation.  The  faith  it  had 
given  up  held  for  others  the  light  of  life  ;  but 
in  the  knowledge  to  which  it  aspired  it  found 
only  darkness  visible. 

THE    END 


B'lder  &*  Tanner  The  Selwood  Printing  Works  Prome  and  London 


38372 


,,.cnuTHtW.WGJpNftL;- 


J^' 000  331  596   7 


